Seed of Destruction
by Connie Nervegas
Summary: Leonardo must find chaotic dark energy hiding deep in the city before it destroys the universe. He stumbles from one awkward situation to another in his bid to locate the deceptive evil power, encountering a workaholic stripper, Hal Barton: serial killer, and the definition of selfless friendship along the way!
1. NINJA STALKER

_I had some vague impressions of a new OC and decided to just fumble around and see if it could turn into anything. _

_Before anybody points out anything, I'm sure there is one 24 hour a day strip club somewhere in the world, and she happens to work there and it totally has NOTHING to do with the fact that it was convenient for the plot… Anyway… _

_This turned into an original No-Leo story with a different version of Cherry that I'm working on, so I may drop this and never finish it if it interferes with that story. But who knows. I thought I should post it since I kind of liked it._

"Do you usually get in at 4am on a school night?" asked the mysterious voice.

The heavy iron door of the college dorm slammed shut down the hallway as one of the inmates went to the lobby to get their mail. She staggered across the room in the dark and searched for the lamp, flipping the switch. He must have unplugged it.

"I would get in earlier if I didn't work and then study until four, but I'll start going to bed at nine like a good girl," she said and laughed at her hollow wit, exhaustion clouding her brain. Her toes throbbed inside her shoes. "I have to pee. Do I get to see you this time? Oh, do you want to come with me? Since you've been following me everywhere for three days now? You should give me some big tips. I bet you watched every single dance I did tonight, didn't you? Are you just a stalker? Like my biggest fan or something?" The growing worry converted to impatient annoyance as her energy levels sank by the minute.

The shadow warrior sat in the chair in the corner of the room in the dark. The streetlight in the parking lot cast a yellow glow on her bed, missing him by centimeters. Maybe he was nothing but a disembodied voice, smooth and still. "I need you to tell me what you know."

She rolled her eyes into the dark corner and threw her coat on the floor. "Why do you even care so much? I think you're full of shit and just want to come see me after hours and get a private show. Isn't that really it?" She kicked off her heels and one sailed across the cluttered dorm room and bounced off the wall close to his shadowy corner.

The shadow warrior sighed and said, "I need full disclosure. If you want to be able to go on taking your clothes off in front of strangers for money and reading your books about Mayan iconography and whatever else it is you like to do. Or do anything at all. The time is close and you know it."

"You want full disclosure from me?" She laughed and pulled off her top, showing him her exposed breasts, waiting for a reaction. "I think I'm just imagining you so I'm going to pretend you're not here."

But the shadow warrior still breathed silently in the corner and when he spoke his tone didn't deviate from the usual measured beats. "There are some very bad people out there who would do anything to figure out what you know. You doodled it on the back of a placemat while backstage at the strip club. The most intelligent people on the planet can't figure this problem out."

She slowly pulled down her skirt and let it fall to the floor while simultaneously checking her planner for any missed assignments tomorrow. "Well, they're just not trying hard enough then. You're the one sitting in a strange girl's room in the dark in the middle of the night. Maybe you're the bad guy. I don't even know what you look like."

The chair creaked and he may have stood up or shifted his weight, but she still couldn't see him. "I assume that people living in the world would like it to go on so. I took the liberty of adding my number to your phone in case you have a nighttime craving to text me."

"Like impossible physics problems that I solved or naughty pictures?" She entered the name NINJA STALKER into her phone as his contact name.

The shadow shifted and the outline of a muscled arm briefly flashed in the streetlight. "I'm more turned on by long numbers that have the potential to be utilized by evil scientists to create weapons that destroy the universe than girls taking their clothes off in front of me."

She slid her panties down a little on her hips and said, "Do you want me to recite pi and do a sexy dance then?" Her patience broke as she received no answer to her provocation and she said, "Look, I know that Doctor What's-His-Face wanted to know how I solved that, but it's no big deal. I read about it on the back of a newspaper and it said that the problem is unsolvable and I thought it was a misprint because it works out really easily. And I'm tired of Mr. Mysterious sitting in my room at night asking me for the answer. If it's so important that nobody ever know the answer, then why should I give it to anybody, let alone a guy who sits in the dark and won't let me see him at all."

She turned to the dresser and pulled out a nightgown covered in sparkly skulls and gasped as she felt warm breath on the back of her neck. The voice was only a few inches behind her. "I'm right here if you're so concerned with what I look like. Just turn around."

But suddenly she didn't want to know. All of her actions up until this moment crashed into the front of her mind. How had she let herself stand alone in her room in the middle of the night, naked, with no defense and a strange man inches away. And then practically point that killing her solved all his issues. She slowly turned and saw nothing but large brown eyes in a dark and not-quite-human face. A man, but not quite a man and he had some kind of heavy brace on his back, almost like a shell. He didn't wear any clothes but some pads and equipment. "You're young…" she said. His voice sounded older than his face.

She sensed a flutter of movement beyond the young ninja, in her bathroom. She opened her mouth to say, "Look out!" but before she could let out a sound, the flutter of movement had turned into a person dressed from head to toe in black, silently rushing at his back with a sword drawn. He reached over his back and pulled a katana from a holster and without turning to even see his attacker or taking his eyes off her, he swept the sword behind him and flicked it across the attackers throat. "Well, now we're both exposed," he said as the man fell on his knees, holding his throat in vain to collect the spurting blood.

"What did you just do?! Call the police! He's dying!" She pointed at the man lying on her dorm room floor, spilling his blood on a copy of the Dresden Codex that she'd made by printing the panels off Google images and taping them together.

The stranger narrowed his eyes and then turned quickly, his sword still in his hand and cut the man's head cleanly off. "Now he's dead. Obviously, you need to leave now. I apologize about the mess, but that's an elite assassin. He's followed you for a while now."

She stared at the head lying on her gold glitter halter top… Blood… blood everywhere… She'd have to reprint the Dresden Codex again… Everything went black.

The stranger slapped her cheeks and she groaned, brushing them aside. She realized he only had three fingers on that hand. "Hello? No time to faint now. Ninja assassins after you. Dead guy in your dorm. Need to leave. Hello! Put on some clothes."

She pulled out her Bob Dylan t-shirt and polka dotted leggings without putting on any panties or a bra.

The ninja warrior spoke hurriedly into a cell phone as she got dressed with slow nauseous movements, her brain going blank every time she pictured the headless corpse in the middle of the room. "Yeah, I have somebody here and we need to put her somewhere safe. Mike, the lab is not a safe place. I mean, even if he did move all that liquid nitrogen away from the furnace like I told him too. Where's Raph? Tell him that April might be having a house guest. Well, she can destroy the earth with one math problem. No! Don cannot meet her! Just forget it! I'll do it myself." He closed his phone and huffed like an impatient child, then closed his eyes for a second and said, "I'm sorry. My brothers are a little immature. I'll take care of this."

"Take care of what?" She hurriedly packed her textbooks for the next day into a backpack with a large painted cannabis leaf on the back. "I don't need to be taken care of. I have money. Where are you taking me?"

He bit his lip and furrowed his eyebrows, which looked slightly silly for a green ninja warrior who had just chopped off somebody's head. He said, "I'm not sure. But we need to move. I'll think of something on the way."

She couldn't stop staring at the black legs in her peripheral vision, thinking that the unseen half of the body had no head and then shoved a thong and sparkly bra in the backpack in case she somehow made it to work the next day. "Am I supposed to go with you? How do I know you're not the bad guy? I mean, you just decapitated somebody in front of me. And you're green." She tried not to let her voice shake. She would just have to scream for the police as soon as they were in the open. The college campus crawled with police like an ant-hill.

He pulled a rag from the belt on his waist and wiped the blood off his sword. "Are appearances that important? You're coming with me whether you like it or not. Usually I'm not one for force, but this is too important to play games."

"Am I playing games?" she asked, adopting a flirty tone in case she could somehow flirt her way out of the situation. As Vicky often told her at the club when she complained about men with wandering hands, the only ones being exploited here are the ones with the money.

"Anybody who hides by taking their clothes off likes to play games." He slid the window open and an early morning breeze cooled the room. A few students laughed loudly in the parking lot and he leapt aside out of the street light and back into the safe shadow of the far corner. "What's your real name, Cherry?"

"That is my real name. What's your name?" She followed him into the corner so she could see him again. Shouldn't she run away from the weird guy that had just shown up and beheaded a guy in her room? Well, if he hadn't been there, then the Bathroom Assassin would have turned her into one of those sad campus murder stories that you see in the newspaper sometimes. And he probably could catch her as soon as she ran.

"Well, if you're going to manhandle me again, then come here and do it. Can I have a name to add to your contact? It says NINJA STALKER right now." She took a step closer. "I'll make it easy for you." She leaned into him and smiled, trying to signal interest.

His hands worked open and closed a few times uncertainly and his eyes widened like a shy little girl. "I wasn't proposing that as a first option. Just follow me out the window once the coast is clear."

She shook her head. "Not until I get a name for my phone."

"I don't give my name to people who want me to believe their real name is Cherry Pop."

Cherry tried to keep smiling the same plastic sexy smile. Don't think about the headless corpse in the room. She shivered in the cool air, her bare arms covered in goosebumps. "I'll just get a hotel room and wait it out. I guess the C.S.I. guys will figure out that I'm not a professionally trained ninja that can cut a guy's throat cleanly with a katana and attribute it to one of the invisible vigilante guys that they never seem to find. Or maybe I could help them out and give them the phone number he entered into my phone." She held up her purple rhinestone covered phone with his phone number displayed on the screen.

In one moment, he rushed forward and tossed her over his shoulder, then jumped out the window and climbed the dorm building, all the way to the roof and carried her over the rooftops as if he could fly, leaping from fire escape to fire escape with no sound at all. She clung to his neck and tried to dig her fingernails into whatever hard surface covered his back, but couldn't sink them into anything to get any kind of grip and settled for a chokehold around his neck instead.

* * *

After fifteen minutes he set her on her feet and said, "Vigilantes don't get caught because they don't let people idly threaten them to make a point or whatever it is you think you're doing. Do you have a death wish or something?"

She fell heavily on her backside, her rainbow colored hair blown in front of her face and hyperventilated.

"Are you going to faint again?" he asked without a hint of concern. Her kidnapper again pulled out his phone and ignored her heavy panicked breathing. He said, "Raph, just stay where you are. I don't need you lumbering around yelling at my informant. This requires finesse, which is why I said you couldn't come with me. Keep helping Don solve that problem and don't let him have any sharp objects." He hung up and said to her, "Are you finished?"

She wobbled to her bare feet and tried to think of something sexy and distracting to say, but she couldn't stop staring at all the city lights on the horizon, surrounding them from every direction. The horizon glowed pink and orange to the east and the shoreline glowed gold in the warm spring light.

He glanced into the sunrise and said, "It matches a few parts of your hair, doesn't it?"

Cherry rolled her eyes. "I hope my kidnapper didn't just try to flirt with me. That would be both lame AND creepy. I'm out of here. Have fun looking at the sunrise, Mr. Vigilante." She walked across the roof towards the maintenance access on the sides of her bare feet, hoping he didn't notice her discomfort.

"I wasn't flirting! And I didn't kidnap… Well, I guess I did. But you're being really uncooperative and it's getting on my nerves!" He rushed around and pulled her towards him by the arm. She waited for him to say something, but he just stared at her.

The longer she looked at him, the less alien he seemed. Sure he was green, but he had huge eyes, like a wide-eyed dog. "How old are you?"

"Why? How old are you?" he asked, still gripping her arm. Then he shook his head as if trying to toss water out of his ears and said, "I mean, it's irrelevant. Just… tell me how you figured it out so I can tell my brother and we can defuse this bomb! Usually people get really cooperative when you throw the phrase 'end of the world' around, but I guess you don't care."

She smiled and laughed in his face. "You're going to explain it to him? It's not like explaining a bad joke or something. I can't just explain how I did it. And why should I? Maybe you're the one trying to arm this thing."

Cherry leaned away from him, hoping he would take a hint and let go of her arm, but he held on a little tighter. "Fine! If you want to be my buddy and stick around, that's fine. Let's go have breakfast. Take me to I.H.O.P." She stopped leaning backwards and he stumbled awkwardly as her weight fell into him again.

He said, "I'm a secret ninja vigilante, remember? I can't go to I.H.O.P." Now he let go of her and crossed his arms. "Am I supposed to babysit you while you think about whether or not you'll let the world blow up? I don't have time for this!" He threw his hands up dramatically and scared a flock of pigeons roosting on a TV antenna.

"I'll treat you. How about that? We can go to my work and eat in my dressing room." She scanned the horizon as if GIRLS XXX could be seen from the sky.

He scoffed and rolled his eyes. "I know you're a math genius or something, but I'd thought you could have calculated that if you had an assassin waiting in your dorm, that he probably went to your work place first and got information there."

Well, he was probably right. "I don't think so. They probably went through my parents. If they're looking for me and track me down to my dorm room number, they probably looked under my real name. And if you're too afraid to go there because there are more assassins waiting, I'm sure that Misty and Brandy can take care of themselves."

He sighed and said, "I thought you said Cherry was your real name. And I suppose it wouldn't hurt to check the place out. I could at least shake the guy down for information. It's hard to interrogate guys with no heads."

She put her arms around his neck, bracing herself for flight. He didn't move and said, "Well, don't worry. I'm sure your friends are okay…" with a slightly high pitched voice as if he chose that moment to suddenly regress back through puberty.

"I'm waiting for you to go jumping the rooftops again, dumbass!" She took the opportunity to rub her chest against his to get a reaction and was surprised when he pushed her gently away.

"Stop that. I'm serious. I don't appreciate it." He crossed his arms and glared. "I'm trying to work here. This is my job. I'm not here for you to give me a lap dance or rub your tits all over me. Okay! We're going to go see if there are any assassins hiding at your work place and then I'm going to take you somewhere safe so that I can try to get these numbers that will save the world so I can give them to my brother so he can come up with some formula to thwart that evil scientist and then I'm going to go home and go to bed. I've been awake for four days now. And nothing you do, no matter how obnoxious, is going to stop me from getting this information, so, CHERRY POP, you can rub me all you like, but it won't make any difference. And I'm really close to just knocking you out and carrying you home to my brother and he can administer some truth serum. So you have one hour to tell me what I need to know, or the plan changes. Now get over here!"

She realized she had taken several steps away from him during his stern lecture and she scoffed and said, "Oh, fuck you! I'm getting a hotel room."

But he grabbed her around the midsection, turned her around to face him, staring death at her and then threw her back over his shoulder. "Which way to your place of work? If you want to help me. That's fine. But you're not leaving until I get this information. I can find this place on my own."

She decided that the next time a ninja bullied her for information that could destroy the planet, she would change her name and hide out somewhere for a while instead of stripping in front of him and antagonizing him. "Whatever… I don't care…" It didn't matter. Just another ride on a train through a bad situation. Just shut up and ride through it and lie still until it was over.

And then he moved to the edge of the building, without bothering to ask her for a location or looking it up on his phone. "I've already been there, watching you, Cherry Pop. I meant to complement you on your routine, but haven't had the chance." He leapt off the building and landed softly on a fire escape across the alley.

She reached for something to grip and nearly sliced off a finger on one of his swords. "Do you have a name?" she asked again.

"Yes." He scaled the building in nearly an instant and ran across the rooftop towards the next alley.

"You're a bastard," she said as she watched sun coming up over the horizon.


	2. GIRLS XXX

_I have no idea if anybody will like this or not. The last time I had Leo spend time with a girl it was in Black Wings and I ended up killing him because I was 1. Depressed and wanted to see him die and 2. I hated the story after a while. _

"Just make yourself at home," Cherry said as she anxiously cleaned the dressing room. Her kidnapper sat stiffly on a chair as if he thought he might get a contagious disease from touching the furniture. It was almost like having a visit from her parents.

He didn't relax at all and said, "You don't need to clean on my account. I live in a sewer. What is this?" The ninja pulled an object from under his ass and held it aloft for inspection.

"That's a riding crop. I was going to do an act with it, but it looked too stupid. I thought it looked too much like a magic wand or something. I mean, I usually just use the props for bachelor parties or private shows, you know." She grabbed it out of his hands and tossed it into a trash can and then paced the room. Cherry stopped pacing to search through some desk drawers and pulled out some cash. Then she pulled off her top and dug out a bra from a closet. The kidnapper cleared his throat and she realized that he had his eyes shut. "Whatever. You are such a virgin. Are we going to go on the road or something? Like a buddy cop movie?" She shoved the cash into her bra and then put her shirt back on.

The kidnapper stood near the door, presumably listening for footsteps.

"I have a thong that glows in the dark too. I think it might give me cancer in my anus, but whatever. It gets tips."

Someone knocked on the door and the kidnapper assumed a fighting stance like a character from a Karate Kid movie. A woman's grainy voice asked through the door, "You in there, Cherry? You need to fill in for Brandy. She just sprained her ankle wearing those vinyl platforms with the fish in the heels. I told her that it was a bad idea."

Cherry answered back, "Yeah, great, Vicky! I can do that. For how long?"

"Oh, just an hour or so, until Vanessa can get her kids to the babysitter." Vicky lumbered back down the hall.

"You cannot go on stage!" the kidnapper said, hovering in front of the door as a blockade, his arms crossed sternly.

She rummaged through her wardrobe and grabbed a thong and her most padded bra. "What are they going to do? Shoot me in the ass? Won't it be a little public? I thought they'd rather snuff me in the dark when I'm alone in my room. Oops! That's what kidnappers do. Just shut up and sit down. Or go out there and watch. I don't care." Money was money was money. And Mr. Sewer-Dweller probably didn't have any. And she couldn't let Brandy or Vanessa down. How many times had they filled in for her when she was late?

"I still don't think you're taking this seriously." The kidnapper politely handed her a pair of red stilettos as if he were her butler. "They don't care about anybody seeing it because they know they won't get caught. I said they were elite. Elite means don't-care-if-I-get-caught-because-I-get-paid-if-I-plug-this-stripper-in-the-ass."

Maybe he was right. She pictured herself gyrating on stage and just as she spun around the pole, a bullet puncturing her butt cheek and then she would bleed to death on Alistair Montrose, the ancient oil tycoon's lap. Cherry Pop, local stripper, shot to death while performing a lap dance for an 87 year old billionaire at GIRLS XXX last night. At least she wouldn't be around to witness her parents' disappointment at her funeral.

"Well, maybe that's the solution to all your problems, Mr. Ninja. If I'm dead, then my brain and thus the math problem of doom dies with me. Ever think of that?" She stepped out from behind her changing screen and motioned for her heels. "Give it. I need to get out here."

"Well… don't get to close to anybody. Don't do any lap dances…" He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "If I wanted to assassinate a stripper I'd ask for a lap dance and try to get her in a dark corner alone and use a dagger."

She stared at him with narrowed eyes. "Why would you say that seconds before I'm about to go out there and give a nasty 87 year old dude a lap dance. Are you trying to make me puke or something? Just… shut up!" She pulled on the door handle, but the ninja leaned backwards blocking it.

"I'm serious! Don't go in any dark corners or to the ladies room or get close to anybody. I'll be watching." His swords scratched the wooden door as he leaned against it.

She finally sighed and then put her hand between his thighs, searching for sexual organs and gave them a good grab.

The mighty ninja didn't budge and stared back into her eyes. "You have to do better than that cheap trick."

Nobody dared Cherry Pop and nobody just stood there and stared when she had her hands on their genitals. At least she thought that's what she had her hands on. Someday in the future, at least if the universe didn't end, she'd draw out his genitals on paper and compare them to Grey's Anatomy and then maybe Google some animal genitalia out of curiosity. With her free hand she worked her bra down around her waist and moved against him, still fumbling for a grip on his junk, unsure of what she actually held in her hand.

"You could just ask me to move," he said, his voice a little rushed, but he still didn't budge.

"Move, please," she whispered in his ear in as sexy a tone as she could manage, filtering out all the annoyance and exhaustion and stress because she still had to write a 5,000 word essay in two days about dendrochronology and still hadn't had time to look up a source.

Finally, he shoved her hand away and stepped aside.

"I know. If this ninja assassin corners me, I'll just catch him by the dick. Seems to be a good method of getting rid of them." She slammed the door in his face and pulled her bra back up. Chastity walked past her and said, "That's a little anti-climactic, isn't it? Going out with your tits flying around."

She ignored her and took her place on the pole, vacantly spinning and crawling around the stage. Just as she'd finally made her way to the end of the stage and moved her cleavage into Mr. Ancient Billionaire's face, she thought she saw a flash of light out of the corner of her eye behind the stage and suspected that Ninja Stalker had just snuck backstage to keep an eye on her in case she went running topless out of the club and into traffic to escape him.

The oil tycoon asked for a personal lap dance.

Where had she found all those high resolution pictures of the Dresden Codex in the first place? Of course she'd lacked the foresight to save them on a flash drive. Was it Google images? Maybe she could find them through one of the university library databases.

She strutted off the stage and tripped when a heel caught in some old chewing gum stuck to the floor. A burly guy with a beard and a flannel shirt caught her as she landed on his knees and she hoped he wasn't an opportunist. There was something shiny in his belt and one of the disco balls swiveling overheard reflected enough light to expose a curved knife, at least eight inches long, tucked into an inside coat pocket. "Hey, how about a dance and I'll give you a huge tip to make up for the awkward catch. How does that sound?"

Who was she kidding? The university databases were total crap and never had links to anything but synopses of articles that nobody cared anything about.

"Uh… great," she smiled and glanced backstage, wondering if she even remembered her password to get into the InfoTrac database at all anymore. "I need… I think I need to get backstage. Sorry, honey." She pretended to limp and refused help from a few patrons as she bravely hobbled backstage to her dressing room.

As soon as she got back into the dressing room and slammed the door in Vicky's face when she told her that tripping, stumbling and looking awkward didn't represent the sexy image of the club, Cherry grabbed her cell phone off her dresser and checked for text messages. NINJA STALKER: what happened?

She texted back: where are you?

Within five seconds the dressing room door opened and she rushed behind the dressing room screen. It clattered as a green hand shoved it aside, leaving her cowering in the open. "What happened?" he asked. "Did you feel up another dangerous guy and get stabbed?"

She stood up straight and he averted his eyes as her cleavage came level with his face. "Oh, grow up!" she said as she pulled her Bob Dylan shirt back on and searched the room for her leggings. "One of the guys out there had a huge knife. Maybe it's nothing…"

"Maybe he was out skinning catfish in the East River?" the Ninja Stalker asked sarcastically. "Well, which one is it? What did he look like?"

She tried to pull some traits out from the indistinguishable crowd of testosterone. "He had a brown beard and he was big. I think he had a coat over a flannel shirt. Buff legs."

The Ninja Stalker gave her a prissy look and rolled his eyes.

"I fell on his lap! I didn't take a full inventory! So what now, Mr. Ninja?" She grabbed her backpack and waited for a command, wondering if she could pretend that going to the university library to sign on to InfoTrac to look for Dresden Codex images was a fundamental part of solving the mathematical equation of doom.

"Why do you keep calling me Mr. Ninja?!" he snapped. "My name is Leonardo!"

"You wouldn't tell me your name! What am I supposed to call you?"

He said, "Well, I guess you'll just have to lure that guy back here so I can interrogate him. Think you can manage that without fainting?"

"I have a thing about blood! I don't just faint like a narcoleptic." She took her clothes off again and tossed her shirt on his head.

Leonardo the Ninja Stalker pulled it off his face and said, "You try my patience, woman."

She left the dressing room and strutted to the stage, looking for the bearded guy with the knife. He leaned against the bar, talking to the bartender. She took a few deep breaths and shook the exhaustion out of her hands, then stood very close to the bearded guy and laughed as he told her some lousy jokes about bartenders and finally, she offered to give him a private dance in her dressing room. Joey the Bartender opened his mouth to tell her off for it, but she shook her head at him and made a slashing motion across her throat. Joey rolled his eyes and resumed studying the drink catalogue.

She showed the Ninja Assassin backstage, saying, "Well, I don't bring people back here much. I just… well… wanted to be alone…" She played shy and flirty because she was too distracted to think of anything better to do.

As soon as they were in the door and it clicked behind them, the Ninja Stalker had him pinned to the wall with a sword to the throat. "I'm feeling rather impatient, so I thought I would cut to the chase and just ask you who you work for instead of attacking you first."

She put her clothes on again and wondered if she had just set a world record for number of a times a person takes their clothes off and puts them back on again in one night. She grabbed her backpack and climbed out the window, congratulating herself on her narrow escape from the crazed ninja and the assassin.


	3. One Day, While I Was in the Bathroom

_And now for more nudity. This wasn't meant to be at all sexual or titillating. I know what people are going to think. At first, he was just going to lecture her in alley and it sounded really boring. I actually was in this situation and thought that ninjas were about to jump out of the ceiling at any minute. So… life experience. Not a creepy fantasy. Just so we're clear that I don't have a creepy fantasy about this topic. Okay… Now we'll begin._

Cherry eluded her pursuers and as soon as she'd put more than a few blocks between them, she headed towards the college. But she had a few hours until class and decided she should go home and sleep. She remembered the headless body in her dorm, all the blood, the blood covered Codex. The intense green ninja with the ancient-looking sword, sitting in the shadows. Right. She needed to go to Wal-Mart to get photo paper to reprint the Codex. The only reasonable conclusion. Her stomach weakened with the memory of the blood and she stopped for a second to lean against a building until she successfully replaced the image with promises of a chili dog as a reward for not passing out. What was she supposed to do with the head body in her room? What if they thought she killed the guy?

The local Wal-Mart shined with a grey dawn halo of savings and Cherry rubbed her eyes, reaching for a grocery cart, tossing aside the collection of sodden advertisements in the bottom. The bored Greeter said, "Hello," without looking up from his favorite staring spot on the floor.

She belatedly realized that she was hauling around a pound of urine and steered towards the closest bathroom, abandoning the empty cart to the masses of shoppers.

Hopefully, Leonardo the Intense Ninja hadn't been stabbed to death during his assassin battle, she thought vaguely, as she sat sleepily on the toilet, nearly dozing off and wondering why she was at Wal-Mart and not on her way to class in the first place. Oh, yeah. She wanted to avoid the headless body in her dorm room. She should call Leonardo and make him pay for the cleanup costs. She'd definitely lose her deposit on the room after they found the blood and the headless body. She'd used all of her scholarship money to pay double for a single room with a bathroom. Working an exhausting and lonely job as a stripper in a dangerous part of town was definitely worth it, since she didn't have to listen to roommates shaking their bunks with their boyfriends and could study all hours of the night in peace.

All of the lights went out in the bathroom and she blinked in the total darkness. A black out? She couldn't see anything. How would she pull up her pants in the dark? Well, that wouldn't be the hard part. How would she know if she'd adequately cleaned herself up before she pulled up her pants? What if she dropped the toilet paper on the floor in the dark and some stranger came along in ten minutes when the lights had come back on and they found it? Maybe she should stay there on the toilet until the lights came on? She reached for her phone and then remembered that the battery was dead and so her phone flashlight would be of no use. Maybe she could wait until someone opened the door and let in a little light. Or she could ask to use their phone so she could finish up her toilette and get out of the bathroom. This was probably what total blindness felt like. Didn't they have a backup generator at this store?

She heard a scrape above her head and her heart beat several times faster.

A ninja ambush in the ladies room at Wal-Mart. Truly, the stupidest way to die. She rewrote her obituary to read: An NYU student was murdered by a ninja assassin while using the toilet at the local Wal-Mart today. Reports say she died clutching a box of blond hair dye and a package of photo paper as she was strangled to death. "Well, she never did have any sense," her mother said in a quote when confronted with the sad reality that her daughter had been murdered because she was too stupid to think that ninjas were polite enough to not kill you while you were in the ladies room.

The panel above her head slid with so little sound that she wondered if it was just a mouse. If there were mice at Wal-Mart, she should probably write to the Health Department.

"Well, I killed the assassin that you left me to fight," said a smooth male voice, three inches away in the dark.

Cherry screamed and felt a hand clamp over her mouth.

"It's Leonardo!" He shushed her as if she were a fussy infant. "Don't worry. I already locked the door. We won't be disturbed."

She brushed his hand away and sighed. "It should make me feel better that I was just locked in a bathroom with a killer ninja in the complete dark while I'm sitting on the toilet?"

"Well, you're not dead yet, so yes," he said. She wished she could see the expression on his face, although she hadn't realized what a sexy voice he had while he'd been decapitating a man in front of her. She'd been slightly distracted at the time. Leonardo said, "My three br… uh… associates… have been dispatched to other fires that need putting out and I'm going to keep you safe. You don't need to worry. What can I do to let you know that I mean no harm? I know that I must have come across as rather impatient, but I apologize. I've had only three hours of sleep in six days and my brother threatened to move across the world and you may be the harbinger of the apocalypse. But it is no excuse! I offer my humble apologies and you can't see it in the dark, but I'm bowing."

She felt a small swish of air against her face. "That's nice. Please back away. You're a ninja right? Can you see the toilet paper?"

"Yes, why?" She felt a draft of air as the warm body moved a step away from her.

She stood up and was about to yank on her pants when the lights suddenly came back on. Cherry reached for the toilet paper. "Finally!" she cried as the toilet paper and the ninja illuminated with florescent light.

Her bashful ninja covered his eyes and tried to turn around in the restricted bathroom stall. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to intrude on your privacy! I have a mission! And I can't let you out of my sight!"

"Well, you can't see me if you hide your blushing eyes." She zipped up her pants and said, "I'm decent now. Turn around, Oh Virginal One."

The blushing green ninja turned around, scowling and crossing his arms. "I have better things to do than listen to taunts about my virginity from a skanky stripper that can't keep her clothes on in front of a stranger for more than a few seconds! I'm trying…"

Cherry's face flushed and her stomach twisted. She poked Leonardo the Lecturing Ninja in his chest. It was very hard, like leather. "Listen! I am not a slut! Don't ever call me that! I work! A lot! It's no different than being a waitress! I get paid so I can go to school because nobody else will do it for me! Got it! And I was minding my own business in here and you are the one who dropped out of the ceiling and stood here talking like it's a great time to have a conversation with a strange woman while she's locked in the ladies room! Creep! Don't ever… Whatever! Get out of my way!" She tried to push past him, but he dodged her every clumsy move, stepping form side to side.

"I'm sorry! But I've seen you naked more than dressed and it gives a guy an impression…" He looked awkwardly at the floor and said, "I know what it's like to be judged at first sight and I'm sorry. I don't know you and I shouldn't judge…"

"Well, you can guard me while I'm in class!" She dropped her backpack and rubbed the bridge of her nose, trying to block out the stressed and exhausted tears and images of the dead headless person lying next to the bed she dearly wanted to crawl into. "Just leave me alone! Nobody cares what I do! I'll just walk around with my universe destroying information and I promise not to think about it again."

"Did you say that you can't even remember how to solve it again?" Leonardo asked, sounding curious and as if he had manfully chosen to ignore her tears of distress.

Cherry shrugged and let her backpack sink onto the germ covered bathroom floor. Not that it mattered if she got a flesh-eating disease from a public bathroom. Everybody died. Might as well hurry up and get it over with.

Leonardo carefully put a hand on her backpack strap and watched her with big brown eyes, waiting for a rebuke, letting him know that he was out of line. He picked it up off the floor as if it weighed nothing and slung it over the shell on his back. "I can carry these. You look tired. I would say sit on the toilet, but I don't think it's sanitary. You said that you showed the problem to a teacher? Maybe we could talk to them…"

"He's in the United Arab Emirates right now. I don't think he even knew what I was talking about." She dried her eyes, her stomach easing at the small display of chivalry. "I had it on that placemat, but that creeper took it."

Leonardo said, "What creeper? You mean a patron at the stripping place?"

She wondered if he was foreign. Sometimes his phrasing sounded slightly off, as if he hadn't heard an English speaker say the term face to face. Not as if he had an accent, but as if he didn't have any first world experience talking to people conversationally. "Yeah, he was this lame guy in a wife beater that used to come in for a lap dance and… well, Lamonte threw him out…"

"Oh…" His eyes opened very wide with adolescent shock and he said, "Well, he sounds very ungentlemanly to say the least! He stole your homework too!"

Cherry said, "Well, I didn't care. He was gone and didn't come back. It happens, you know. It's… whatever. Looking, grabbing, whatever. I have a biological anthropology class today. We have to side teeth…" She rubbed her sore eyes with her sleeve and put a hand on his arm, trying to politely signal a desire for release, but he didn't move.

"Well, I think that my first step is finding the creeper who took your written work. I could just give the frickin' thing to Don and be done with it!" He pulled out a cellphone in a heavy OtterCase and typed in a few lines of text before glancing up at her. "I hope you'll help me. I won't really know what I'm looking at unless you're with me." He twitched as if he needed to bow again, but they were so close that he couldn't manage it. At an inch away Leonardo smelled like strong cheap cologne and herbal tea. A little like her grandfather. "I apologize for my rude and harsh behavior and I promise that I will keep you safe until we solve this issue."

"Are you from the past or something? Like medieval times?" She could tell he was tired. Every time he spoke, his eyelids fluttered as if they were on the brink of refusing to open again.

A genteel green knight wearing nothing but two katanas, a mask and some miscellaneous gear had just pledged himself in service of her safety. She pictured him in armor on a horse and then wondered if she had an unconscious desire for a man to rescue her because of the Princess stories she'd grown up on as a child and decided she should put it on her list of possible Ethnographic studies for her graduate level cultural anthropology class. She knew she'd have to do participant observation, but all her ideas so far were boring as hell. "Let's go find a hotel and go to sleep while the world blows up around us," she said laughing, hardly knowing what she was saying. Bed. Soft bed. Ninja with sexy voice in armor keeping watch. Molars were much harder to side than premolars, canines and incisors. Maybe she could look at his teeth while he was asleep and count them.

"You can sleep," Leonardo said, warily glancing towards the bathroom door as an annoyed patron knocked. "I'll stay up and keep watch. I'm going to go out the way I came, but I parked my sister's van in a handicapped spot in row J3. Just knock three times on the door and I'll let you inside. Okay?" He tried to give an encouraging little smile.

"Yeah, sure." She reached for her backpack, but he leapt up onto the bathroom stall partition, pulled aside the ceiling panel and climbed up into the roof with it before she could ask him to give it back.

She stumbled back out of Wal-Mart, vaguely annoyed that she'd had to wait ten minutes to buy her blond hair dye and photo paper. Hopefully, Leonardo hadn't driven off with her textbooks in the mean time, annoyed that universe-destroying-girl had taken so long to check out. Just like a man! Finally, she spotted a twenty year old grey van with black tinted windows and the words M.J. HAMATO RULEZ! spray painted on the side. She knocked three times on the door and wondered what she should do if a rapist opened the door. Do nothing and get killed, most likely.

The door unlocked and opened a crack. Cherry pulled it open and her felt her body relax as she saw Leonardo in the driver's seat with her backpack between the driver's and passenger's seats. She climbed inside and said, "Okay, I'm here. Now we just have to find this guy. Can't we please sleep first? If you drive with less than three hours of sleep in six days, then you'll kill us both and then the universe will be destroyed anyway. Because you were too much of a dumbass to go to bed."

"I cannot indulge in sleep. I am the leader of my clan and…" He shifted and the van lurched as he forgot to look out for pedestrians and nearly ran over a woman pushing a toddler in a cart. His face fell as the mother aimed words of abuse through the darkened car window at his carelessness. "I see your point. I suppose we can park the van and sleep in the back…"

"I have money! I'll just get us a cheap hotel." Then she could dye her hair blond. All these ninja assassins were looking for a blue haired stripper. But not a blond. She congratulated herself at her genius plan of disguise and wondered if Leonardo would apply the dye on the back of her head.

His face pursed with distaste. "I'd rather not."

"Don't worry. I won't take advantage of you," she mumbled as she pulled out her phone and uselessly pounded a few buttons on the dead screen. "Give me your phone." Cherry held out her hand.

"You've already taken advantage of me, remember?" Leonardo pulled out his phone and looked up local hotels, with a sour glance of disapproval.

"Well, I don't have much to work with when a ninja tries to hold me hostage." She crossed her arms and looked out the window, waiting, while her head bobbed up and down sleepily.

Suddenly, he pulled out of the parking spot and said, "I've found one and paid for it with my own account. You can thank me later."

"Okay." She said dimly, not bothering to ask how he wanted to be repaid.

Cherry sat on one of the twin beds and watched Leonardo as he used his cell phone to call at least six different people, speaking to most of them in an Asian language she didn't know, getting reports on local evildoers and dishing out orders. He hung up and stood awkwardly next to the bed, staring at her, all of his authority dissipating in a second.

"So do you have employees or something?" she asked as she kicked her shoes across the room and read the box of hair dye. "You sound like you're the boss man."

"They're my family." He reached for his belt buckle and then fidgeted, gave it up and sat primly on his bed. "I'm the leader, yes. Do you have family?"

She pulled out the thin rubber applicator glove and said, "My mother lives on a farm. You're the leader of your family and they're also you're employees? Sounds like the mob. You run a mob of aliens or something, don't you?"

He exhaled sharply as if he were on the brink of a tantrum. "I'm a mutant. I am not an alien."

"Well, you're a little green man, aren't you?" Little was an understatement. He was a little taller than Cherry and buff, like an Olympic swimmer. "Do you live in your spaceship? And that's why you can't take me home to your headquarters because humans are forbidden so you have to take strangers to a hotel to sleep?"

He leaned back against the headboard and searched the nightstand for the television remote, turning on the television. "That's… vaguely accurate… but I can't tell you anything else. We are not a mob. We are a normal family. But we happen to be trained for blood vengeance too. It's no big deal." He yawned as he forced his eyes open to watch a talk show called, _I Slept With My Father's Girlfriend and Now She's Pregnant!_ Leonardo said, "How disgusting!"

"Well, if you're so bored, you can help me dye my hair." Cherry handed him the bottle of hair dye and he stared for a seconds. She wondered if he would be sharper after a full night's sleep. "It might be really sexy too. You know, in movies when a guy and a girl are on the run she always dyes and cuts her hair and she's in there with hardly any clothes and she's wet and…"

"I don't have hair so I don't know how helpful I can be. If it's sexy then I should stay out here and keep watch." He handed the bottle back to her and she struggled to reach every strand on the back of her head without ninja assistance.

* * *

An hour later, she left the bathroom with wet blond hair and found her gallant ninja asleep sitting up on his bed with the remote still in his hand, his mouth open slightly.

She reached for his mask, hoping she could gently pull it off to see his face more clearly, but his eyes snapped open and he grabbed her wrist, threw her down on the bed, and put his heel against her throat. "Stop! It's me!" she said, frozen solid under her attacker.

Leonardo instantly released her and cried, "I'm so sorry!" and practically fled across the room from her. "Don't ever grab me while I'm asleep! I didn't think I'd have to explain to anybody that it's a really bad idea! Just… I can't control my reflexes when I'm asleep, you know… You're blond. It's very nice. Much more… human…"

She looked in the mirror and realized that she hadn't seen her real hair color since her dad's funeral. Electric pink and a chance to horrify her mother in front of everyone had seemed like good idea at seventeen. "I'm going to go get a bottle wine from the store down the road. I'm too strung out to get to sleep."

Leonardo nodded vacantly, stretching. "I'll take a shower and then call my brothers and demand more updates, I suppose. Try to remember what you can about the creeper. What is a creeper, anyway?" He blinked his large brown eyes like an innocent cow.

"A creeper?" She pulled her I.D. out of her backpack and simultaneously plugged her phone into the cracked wall socket with the other hand and said, "A creeper is a weird dude who, you know, follows you in the dark where a girl can't see, sits in the shadows and watches her, threatens her, won't leave when he's asked, watches her while she's using the john. There's actually a fetish for that. Urolagnia…"

Leonardo pursed his lips as if repressing a lecture and waved her away. "Get your wine!" He fled into the bathroom and she heard the door lock.

She laughed warmly, thinking he was the most precious ninja she'd ever met.

* * *

"I think his name was Hal," Cherry said randomly as she sipped a glass of wine and read The Human Bone Manual, searching for clues on how to side molars. "Like Hal Braxton or something. Hal… Burton… Hal…"

Leonardo stirred in his half sleep and sat up, rubbing his eyes. "I thought we came here to sleep."

"We need to find the guy with the placemat too, don't we? Here, have some wine. I can't drink the whole thing myself." She stood next to Leonardo's bed and handed him the half full bottle.

"I can't drink this." He sat it on the bedside table and said, "Hal…?"

Cherry grabbed the bottle and put it back in his hand. "It'll make you sleep better. I don't want to waste my money. He had a really boring name. I only remember because I thought it was odd when he told me his full name while I was dancing for him. Usually guys don't do that. Well, they talk a little, you know?"

Leonardo shrugged. "No, I've never had a lap dance." He timidly took a drink from the bottle. "I can't have much. I need to stay alert."

"If you stay alert, you're going to jump up every minute and never get any sleep! Don't worry. I promise I won't destroy the universe until you're well rested." She sat on his bed and felt of her hair. Blonde. Weird. "I don't think you have enough money to afford a dance from me," she said, slapping his arm playfully. "Keep your mind on the job, Ninja Boy!"

"I'm not a boy! I'm sixteen! That is well past the age of a man in some societies. Probably…" He took a long drink from the bottle.

"Can I look at your teeth or is that forbidden on your planet?" she asked.

He leered sideways away from her. "No, you cannot look at my teeth. Can you write down the mystery of dark energy in a quantifiable manner so that I can send it to my brother and disarm the nuclear weapon that might destroy the universe?"

"I already said no!" She stood up and stumbled into a bureau so she could look into the mirror again. There's my little toe-head, she thought.

Leonardo drank another hearty swig of the wine and said, "You have a bizarre curiosity about my body. Not that I blame you!"

"Hal…" Cherry stared at her reflection, trying to remember. He had a doughey pale face, a plain white t-shirt and too familiar manners. He'd introduced himself with his full name and said he'd like her to dance for him. She imagined a small animal caught in a trap as she leaned into him. "Hal Barton! That was it!" She wrote the name on the back of the wine bottle receipt and stuffed it in her jeans pocket.

Her ninja companion turned on the television, drinking from the wine bottle as if it were water, changing the channels rapidly. "I don't understand why a man would pay a woman to take off her clothes. I had a woman naked in front of me several times and I was quite inconvenienced by it! It seems to me that the trouble is keeping their clothes on!"

"Want a little demonstration?" she asked, giggling.

He put the empty bottle on the bedside table and said, "I've seen you perform already. I'd rather watch Family Feud." He crossed his arms and smirked.

Cherry sat next to him on the bed, leaning her cheek against his solid arm and felt him wince slightly. They watched Family Feud for a while. Cherry's answers were much better than Leonardo's. He blamed the wine. She blamed his life alone in a space ship. Eventually, her eyes closed and she fell asleep.

* * *

All life ended. What is life? It is merely chemical. The truth revealed itself over and over for eternity. Destruction is a necessary beginning. If life is a chemical, then it does not truly exist. And why should it get so much more attention than anything else in the vast universe? It is hardly more than nothing and thinks too well of itself.

The black pressing void dissolved into Leonardo's concerned face, shaking her shoulders. "Wake up! What's wrong?"

Cherry brushed him away and rolled off the bed, searching blindly for her phone. She needed to talk to him. She needed him to explain why she heard these empty things and why they seemed to make sense when she knew they shouldn't. He would know. He would have a story to tell or a friend who had gone through something similar or a medical explanation. Cherry pulled her phone out of the wall and waited with shaking fingers as it loaded, her head spinning with the unpleasant end of the wine.

She dialed a number and said, throat thick with sleepy tears, "Dad, I'm lonely. Please come and get me. I want to come home. I'm a blonde again."

Cherry dropped the phone on the bed and then caught Leonardo out of the corner of her eye, picking her abandoned phone off the bed as she stumbled to the bathroom and distractedly turned on the shower.

Leonardo stood in the doorway, holding her phone, the operator telling them that the number had been disconnected.

"I'm crazy." Cherry turned off the shower, deciding she didn't want to shower with a strange man in the room and she would stay up all night again so she didn't hear the voice with no words again. She stared at the floor, eyes foggy with dim tears.

"Do you want me to find your father?" Leonardo asked as he knelt down in front of her. "I could have my brother look for his current number."

She shoved him by the shoulders and knew he could have easily prevented her attack. "He's dead, stupid! Why would I keep his dead number unless he died!"

He didn't answer and reached around her, turning on the bathtub knobs. Cherry smelled his neck as he came close. Now he smelled comforting, like a forest after a fresh rain. Not at all like a teenager trying hard to smell good as she'd thought that morning. She put her arms around his neck, breathing deeply.

Leonardo didn't pull her away automatically, but gently pulled himself back and said as the bathtub filled, "I'm sorry about your father. I can see that you're upset. Take a bath now. I promise I'll be close by. Don't worry about your dreams. We'll deal with everything after you've slept. Okay?"

"Okay," she said meekly and watched him leave the bathroom.

She sat in the bathwater and didn't move for a long time. She heard Leonardo's voice, calling one of his brothers, saying, "She's worse off than Don thought. Tell him that he's an ass and I was right. There's more to this than simple numbers. I'm afraid this is… I don't know what…" His voice changed suddenly, angry and harsh. He said, "Well, I'm sorry if I don't just bash everybody over the head like a cave man, like you! I'm working on this! I'm… finessing! There's something going on psychologically as well as metaphically! Keep an eye on the doctor and you have my full permission to kill him if he gets too close to arming that thing. But I think that's the least of our worries… Is Mike still occupied with Hun's latest activity? It's perfect timing! Anyway, April, Casey, Sensei, Don… they all need to keep working on solving this problem. Got it! No debate! You are not to come out here and you are not to find me and I'm not coming back until I'm sure that this girl isn't going to… whatever she sounds like she's going to do! Well, fuck you too!" She heard the phone click as he hung up.

After nearly an hour, she dried off and put on a complementary bathrobe that hung on the back of the bathroom door. Cherry crept out of the bathroom in case Leonardo was asleep.

But he was sitting up on his bed, watching the bathroom door like a sentry. He gestured for her to come closer.

Cherry sat on the end of the bed as far away as she could manage. "I'm sorry. It sounds like my… mental health problem or whatever it is… Like you're having a lot of trouble and fighting with your soldiers…"

Leonardo laughed. "Trust me. You are not the problem with that soldier! Tomorrow we'll go find Hal Barton and get that placemat and then I can help you more fully. Don't worry."

"I think I need to stay up now. I'll read my…" Cherry gestured at The Human Bone Manual, taking comfort in the reality of the continuation of life and death.

He moved to the other side of the bed and said, "I'll stay up with you then."

"Have you even slept yet?" she asked as she sat next to him, resisting the urge to lean closer and smell him again like a needy weirdo.

"I've slept enough." Leonardo turned on the television and told her to choose a station.

They watched at least ten episodes of I Love Lucy. Leonardo liked Ricky. "He must have worked hard to make it in America at that time and to score a gorgeous woman like Lucille Ball. I wonder what Ethel ever saw in Fred."

Cherry wondered the same thing, as she casually rested against his shoulder again.


	4. The Trailer in the Woods

_I've been wanting to write something creepy and graphic lately because I've been in a lousy mood. So enjoy. I'm not sure how long it takes to get to the woods in New York and my stomach is too upset to care much at the moment._

"What was this person's name again?" Leonardo asked as he drove his sister's van through a dark two-track, the bare branches illuminated by the yellow headlights.

Cherry gripped the grimy armrest of her seat as a pair of eyes lit up white in the road.

The van stopped as Leonardo patiently waited for the deer to cross. The deer lingered in the middle of the two-track, nibbling grass in the dark.

"I think it was Hal Barton. This is the only one I found in the whole state too. It had better be him because if it isn't then I'll sound really stupid." Cherry watched Leonardo as he slowly started forward again. He always seemed to have a very serene and confident expression, as if he had dealt with the imminent destruction of the universe every day of his life.

Her stomach clenched slightly as the two-track widened into a small clearing. A driveway curved sharply around old grey stumps and eventually she saw a small trailer, hardly longer than the van, sitting in the clearing. Woodcutting equipment lay scattered in the cleared yard and a rusty pickup truck full of plastic barrels was parked at the back of the clearing.

Cherry said, "Okay, I'll go in and talk to him. You should probably stay out of sight." She glanced at his green skin, shell and slightly alien features. The swords probably wouldn't give a friendly impression either.

He sighed huffily. "I'm the one who gives the orders. You're just the hostage."

She waved a hand to indicate that she awaited orders from her captor.

Leonardo wrung the steering wheel in his hands, squinting into the dark tree line. "I should stay in the trees in the darkness… out of sight… and you approach the trailer. I'll be nearby. Don't worry."

"Great idea, Boss!" she said with feigned enthusiasm. "I'm glad you thought of it!" She jumped out of the van and shut the door quietly.

Hal Barton, the pushy patron, opened the trailer door and stood with arms crossed in the doorway. He wore a white wife-beater over a paunchy chest covered in black hair. He had flabby arms and skinny legs. A yellow lamp lit up the dead grass in the yard between the van and the trailer.

She glanced at Leonardo, hoping that he had ducked in time so that Hal Barton hadn't seen him, but the back door of the van closed silently as she looked for him. He was already gone.

Cherry called out in a lively voice as she approached the trailer, "Hey! Remember me?"

"Not really." He squinted as he tried to see her face in the dark. "You from the city?"

"Yeah. I gave you a lap dance at GIRLS XXX a while back. I thought you might have found something of mine." She put her hands casually in her pockets and tried a sexy rolling gait. Maybe it would put him at ease.

But he backed up a step and said, "I don't remember going there. You must have me confused with somebody else. I don't go to places like that. Are you one of the dancers?"

Cherry froze. She recognized him. He'd introduced himself with his full name and grabbed her breasts as she danced and then he'd been escorted out with no fight or protest. If he hadn't grabbed her, she would have thought that he was totally bored with her. He had looked straight through her to the doors leading to the dressing rooms.

"Well, I recognize you," Cherry said. "I know I gave you a lap dance and I wanted to ask you a question or two about something. Can I come in? It's freezing out here! I borrowed my boyfriend's van and there's no heat!" She affected a chill and rubbed her warm arms.

He hesitated and then stepped aside to let her through the doorway, looking down at her as she passed, not bothering to make room for her. Her arm brushed against his belly and she could feel his chest hair through his shirt.

The trailer smelled bad. A little like old hamburger left out on a counter top on a hot afternoon in July. An old lamp filled the small space with dull yellow light. Musty blankets covered a fold down bed, mounted on top of a folding dining table.

A dead squirrel lay on the counter on a cutting board, its entrails spilling out. Cherry's eyesight blurred and the trailer dimmed.

She thought, "I'm so going to pass out on this creepy squirrel butcher," just as her eyesight faded to darkness, but instead she felt her body hit a tough leather chest and strong male arms. Definitely not the flabby biceps of Hal Barton, Squirrel Butcher.

"…and must apologize for the fainting. She has a delicate constitution. Is there anywhere… sanitary that I might help her sit down…" Leonardo's voice.

"I'm sorry…" she muttered vaguely as she felt Leonardo steering her effortlessly into a couch at the other end of the trailer as if she weighed as much as a toddler. "…is that your dinner? That's very interesting… Can I ask you some questions for a homework assignment about hunter gatherers…?"

"I get my food from the convenience store down the road. I don't eat this shit squirrel meat. Is your woman stupid?" Hal Barton asked. He moved down the trailer and opened a cupboard, pulling out a few beers. "Here, young man. Have a beer for your trouble."

"Trouble?" Leonardo ignored the offered beer. "It is no trouble to assist my girlfriend!" She wished he hadn't sounded so insulted. He cleared his throat and said, "She told me that she thought you may have accidentally picked up an important homework assignment of hers. She wrote some mathematical equations on the back of a placemat and thought you may have taken it by mistake. She has a habit of leaving her things lying around where anybody could take them when they're extremely important to the fate of mankind." He sat next to her, leaning her weight against him in case she passed out again, she supposed. She scoffed and leaned in the other direction. "You know how schoolwork always feels like it's the end of the world if you're a crazy Hermione type that's obsessed with school over everything else."

"Well… you're an alien," she muttered.

"I can't help but notice that you're green," Hal Barton said, sitting on his bed at the opposite end of the trailer. His voice sounded completely at ease and conversational with Leonardo. "You look like you work out a lot. You know, I have some work I need done with my trees. Would you like to make a little extra money doing some heavy lifting for me? I have sciatica and I'm not supposed to lift over twenty pounds. But I need to get those logs out of the way before it snows, you know."

Cherry watched Leonardo, waiting for him to lead the conversation. He winced at something on top of a shelf and then looked across the room at Hal Barton. "No, I'm not in need of additional work, thank you. My present duties take up much of my time and I must make time for my beloved here." He grabbed her hand and squeezed. She couldn't figure out how to loop her fingers with his since he only seemed to have three fingers on each hand.

Cherry looked up at the shelf and saw the severed head of a dog next to a stack of sexual devices. Magazines depicting disturbing bondage porn lay scattered on the shelves in plain view. Cherry said, her eyes still on the disturbing objects on the shelf, "We were just headed up here because he has to go to the dermatologist on Fridays. He has a rare genetic condition called Rhinoplasticia Dermitologicencia. It's related to that condition where people are covered in hair. It's an overactive production of Beta Carotine. They uh… it doesn't result in hair, but the loss of hair and growth of external shell-like… stuff. Like his shell. It's super rare. Only one other lady in the world has ever had it. She was a nun in Portugal and she died because her shell covered her whole body… So we…"

Leonardo cleared his throat and said, "Yes, I am a medical miracle. Anyway, have you seen this placemat? It was from her stripping place. It probably had a naked woman on the front or something."

Cherry said angrily, "Just because it's in a strip club it must be covered in naked women? It was covered in business ads!"

Hal Barton said, scratching his flabby cheek, "Well… you know… when I was there I don't recall seeing anything like that. Does she work there?"

"Yeah, I'm a dancer there. I gave you a lap dance." Bad memory or what?

"I'm sorry. I don't remember that. I don't let filthy whores touch me. I don't go in for that kind of thing." He popped open his beer and took a drink. "You sure you don't want one? What's your name, boy?"

Leonardo released her hand and fumbled for a second as if he couldn't figure out what he should be doing. "No thank you. My name is… Casey." Then he closed his eyes and sighed as if he'd just said something utterly stupid.

"Yeah, Casey doesn't drink. And I'm not a whore. I don't have sex. I dance. There's a difference. Do you have the placemat or not?" Her cheeks and chest glowed bright red with humiliation.

Hal Barton put his beer down next to the mutilated squirrel, brushing aside its entrails to make space for her can. "I don't remember any such thing. But I might know about this placemat thing you're talking about."

"Might?" Leonardo crossed his arms. "Can you be a little more certain? Maybe the stench of the dead animals is making you confused."

Cherry scanned the trailer in a sudden flash of realization. Trinkets from several animals lay scattered all over the trailer, probably pets. A box full of animal collars, most with name tags, sat on top of the refrigerator and an overturned half turtle shell served as a bowl. But it was filled with bizarre objects that she supposed were sexual. She didn't have much experience with sex in general and definitely hadn't spent any time researching bondage accessories. Not that it was inherently bad in and of itself, but sitting next to a dissected animal gave it a fiendish quality by proximity.

She gave Leonardo's hand a squeeze, hoping that he got the signal that she finally realized that this guy was possibly dangerous.

"What is it you need?" Leonardo asked politely. "If you need anything, I'll happily help you out. If you need help around here with work, as you said, or with getting food. I don't want to judge or anything…"

"Why would I care what anybody thinks?" Hal Barton snapped. His tone cut into Leonardo like a knife, all the civility gone in an instant.

"Okay, okay!" Leonardo said, raising his hands in a peaceful gesture.

Cherry tapped him lightly on the arm. "We should just get going… the… baby needs to be picked up…"

He blinked at her and then said to Hal Barton, "This is a very important matter. If you're proposing an exchange of some kind, then please tell me. I'm sure we can come to some kind of civil…"

"I want you to stay here overnight." Hal Barton said, picking up his beer again, not looking at his shocked audience.

Cherry's muscles froze. She'd only had sex once in her life. It was Eric Peterson, a guy in her high school English class who used to mow the lawn after her dad had a heart attack. The rendezvous took less than ten minutes in the back of his pickup truck parked behind her family's barn. She lost her panties under a tractor. She remembered asking, "Did you start yet?" as soon as he finished. A huge pawing disgusting man with dead animals… and lots of bondage gear…

She looked pleadingly at Leonardo. Maybe he wasn't as honorable as he'd let on. Maybe with the fate of the world in the balance, it was actually an option.

"There is no way that will even be entertained!" he said sternly, but without raising his voice, his eyes narrowed now. "She will not…"

"I didn't mean her," Hal Barton said, gesturing at Cherry with disgust. "I meant you."

He sat backwards a few inches and his face dissolved from self-righteous warrior in control of the situation to a brown eyes virgin in less than a second. "I… why…?"

"I'm not going to explain with her around. Come back around noon today after you've picked up your kid and dumped your girlfriend someplace." Hal Barton tossed his beer at a full trash can and a pair of blood encrusted deer antlers fell onto the floor.

Leonardo stood without a word and gestured for Cherry to follow him. He paused as they reached the doorway and Cherry collided with his shell. "You mean you have it then. You just want something in exchange for it."

"Hey, I'm not stupid. I know it's important. She's told me how to do it too, Pretty Whore," Hal Barton said, laughing at Cherry. "You're not so special."

She felt nauseous and pushed Leonardo's shell. "Let's go."

As they boarded the van, Hal Barton called out of the doorway, "Noon today!" He slammed the door and Cherry heard it lock behind him.

Leonardo quickly turned the van around in the yard and drove back to the main road, down the two-track at break neck speed, slamming on the breaks to avoid hitting the same deer he'd waited so patiently for on the ride in.

* * *

After a fifteen minute ride he pulled into a gas station and turned off the van. He sat in the driver's seat, staring out the window.

"You're not going back there!" Cherry said. "He's like a weird pedophile or something!"

"Well, there's not much human sexual appeal to me, so I imagine I'll be safe from that." He leaned over and opened the glove box, pulling out a credit card. She wanted to grab his arm and cling to him like a frightened Victorian lady. "Here's a credit card. Go get us some food, please. I'd appreciate it. I'll save mine for later. Where would you like me to leave you when I meet with him? There was another hotel down by the turning into the woods. That might be a good place. I'd like you nearby in case things go badly."

Cherry jumped out of the van, vaguely shaking, still smelling dead animals in her nose. She bought a full grocery bag of snack food and drinks and randomly bought a Frisbee for Leonardo. She wanted to buy him something, but had no idea what he would like. But he was extremely fit, so she thought something sporty might be the closest guess she could make.

She handed him enough food for three people and the Frisbee. "Thank you," he said absently. "I'm not hungry right now though. I'll eat and… play with my Frisbee when I'm done negotiating with that man."

"Negotiate?!" she cried, spitting out bits of bologna from her sub. "He wants to gag and spank you or something! You're too… uh…"

"What? I've been hit quite a lot in my lifetime. I've been tortured for information plenty of times. I think I can put up with…" He stopped talking as he pulled into traffic and headed back down the street to the motel.

She said, "You're too precious to get gagged and spanked though. Or tortured. I don't know who would be able to stand doing that to you. You're so…" What was he anyway? "Precious! I don't know!"

"Stop calling me precious!" he yelled. The van idled and he said, "You have an amazing talent of flattering a man while being totally emasculating. Go get a room, please. I'm sorry I shouted. I'm getting a little tense."

"Play with your Frisbee!" she said irrationally as she disembarked to get them a room.

* * *

The motel room stank like cigarette smoke and only had one double bed. Leonardo sat at the small table and picked at his sub. "I didn't like that guy. He was very odd. Are you saying he's going to hit on me or something?"

"Are you being willfully naïve?" Cherry ate all of her food in three minutes and spent the rest of the time poking into the cupboards and drawers as if scary trailer dwellers might pop out of them at any moment. "You were all defensive when it was me. But when he wants you to spent the night up there, then it's CLEARLY not sexual at all. Why? Because you're male?" She sat on the end of the bed and then stood up and paced.

"I don't know. I'm not going to let it happen anyway. I'm a ninja. I'm going to search the trailer while he's preoccupied gutting a cat or whatever it is he does on dates and then leave. I don't have time for this. I don't have time!" He put his head in his hands as if he had a sudden migraine.

"Come on. Let's relax. Let's… play with the Frisbee! Come on!" She slapped him over his dramatic head a few times with the Frisbee and then poked him in the arms with her finger. "Wimp! Are you scared to throw the Frisbee with me?"

He dramatically grabbed it from her hand, opened the window and tossed it outside. He shut the window with a bang and then resumed brooding at the table, his lunch untouched.

Cherry ran out of the motel room and fetched the Frisbee from the empty highway.

When she got back in the room, he'd crawled into bed. "Wake me up in a few hours, I guess. I can't think of anything else to do."

Cherry sat next to him on the bed, anxiously writing a very bad essay that concluded that most men are evil and prey on precious dramatic ninjas who throw their Frisbees out the window. Maybe he needed a puppy… That might relieve some of the tension. Maybe he was afraid of sexual contact with humans because of his alien heritage. She should study his alien family! What a perfect way to contrast human nature, but with a control family of non-humans.

He hadn't even bothered to take off his swords or get under the covers. She watched him sleep and really wanted to remove his mask. Why did he wear that mask? Did he have a hideous scar like the Phantom of the Opera? Possibly. He was sexy in a vaguely naïve and threatening way too. Maybe it was symbolic of his standing on his alien home world.

"What did he mean, 'She's told me too?'" Leonardo suddenly asked without movement or betraying the fact that he'd woken up.

She remembered her dream about Nothing. Just infinite and consuming darkness and power. "I don't know."

He sat up and said, "I guess I'll take a shower. I don't want to ruin bondage fun-time by smelling badly. I'll be out soon."

She waited nervously at the table, eating his untouched food. She realized that it was rude to eat a doomed man's lunch and decided to verify that fact that he was too preoccupied to eat, to alleviate her guilt. The shower wasn't running anymore, so she presumed he was done. She opened the bathroom door and said, "So you weren't going to eat that were you because…"

"Excuse me!" he said, standing at the sink without his mask or any of his gear.

"You're nearly naked all the time anyway and you've seen me naked a lot. Now it's my turn." She appraised the specimen. "Very nice, by the way."

He turned back to the mirror and inspected his face. "I'm busy."

"What? Are you looking for zits? Can I pop them?" She stood next to him, craning her neck to see his alien pimples.

He made a disgusted face and said, "No! That's so gross!"

"Oh, come on. Girls are experts. I bet I can do it without any pus or blood or anything. It won't scar. See how my skin is so creamy and flawless?" She sucked in her cheeks and made a face into the mirror as if posing for sexy webcam pictures. "That's skill, baby."

"I don't believe it. Okay, go ahead and prove it." He pointed to a nearly unnoticeable spot on his forehead. "I want to look good for Hal, you know."

"You should get into something really smelly before you leave. Rub the onions I picked out of your sandwich under your arms." She took his chin in her hand gently and then inspected him as if she were preparing a patient for surgery. "Looks like it's ripe." She put her fingernails over the spot and squeezed out the offending substance, then washed her hands.

"Hey, that wasn't so bad. I usually have Don do it and he always wants to use needles or pliers or… crochet hooks." Leonardo dabbed his face dry.

"Wait!" She ran back to the table and grabbed her phone. "If the end of the world is coming, we need to document how fabulous we look right now before you, you know, head over there and get chopped up into a soup or something."

Leonardo searched the bare medicine cabinet, probably for a toothbrush, but closed it when he didn't find anything. "The world will end and nobody will know how fabulous we were except us while we're being incinerated in infinite darkness."

"We'll beam it back to your home planet!" she said, hip-checking him.

He hip-checked back and she bounced off the wall, her phone nearly flying out of her hand.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" He caught her around the waist, his bare face surprised and embarrassed. "Okay, let's take a picture of our sexy selves and we'll hold on to it. I don't want to shock the people on the mothership. They'll know I'm not taking my tasks as seriously as they think I do."

They took nearly five minutes to pose. She sucked in her cheeks to make sexy duck face and he gallantly put an arm around her, posing like he'd just walked off a cat-walk with his arm around a super model. "Wait, my girls need to show." She took off her shirt and bolstered her rhinestone bra.

Leonardo took the phone out of her hand and held it out before them, taking the silliest picture she'd ever seen. "We look like you're a pimp and you're about to trick me out or something," she said as she observed the ridiculous results.

But then the alarm on her phone went off. "Oh, yeah. You need to go meet… Mr. Creepy now…"

All the fun ended and he dressed in his gear, strapping on his swords like an ancient warrior going to battle. "Don't follow me out there. Just stay here. I'll be back tomorrow. But in case I don't…" He took her phone out of her hand and entered some information. "I've saved my sister April's number in your phone. Just call her and let her know that something happened to me and she'll send somebody up here. Okay?" He looked into her eyes, expecting an answer.

The heroic ninja wanted to keep her safe. She blushed at the sentiment. "What? Hell, no! If you go missing I'm not calling somebody hours away! I'm going to go buy a huge hunting knife and cut off his balls if he touches you! You might not know creepy handsy dudes when you see them, but I do."

He smiled a little and opened the bathroom window, facing the brightly lit noonday trees. "That might be a little hard if you faint." He jumped silently out window and she watched him creep into the trees. A ninja sneaking in the bright sun.


	5. The Blue Barrels

_Going to keep going while the ideas are fresh and I'm not crushed by the despair of work, I guess._

Cherry looked at the yellowed hotel room clock. Leo had only left three hours ago?

She'd watched six episodes of a Spanish soap opera and Consuelo had left the convent, gotten pregnant, lost the baby, moved to Mexico, been on trial for murder, recorded a hit record, hit someone with her car and hid the body because she was afraid her oppressive ex-husband would find out she'd hit his brother with her car and frame her as a drug mule in revenge and bought a new vacuum. Cherry had managed to look at the clock fifty times and drink three Pepsis from the vending machine during that time frame and thought she was an utter failure because she wasn't as productive as Consuelo. Consuelo had breast-fed twins during a tornado and Cherry couldn't even find her own panties under a tractor.

Leonardo would be fine. He decapitates people for a living. His alien parents must have told him what to do when a creepy guy tries to put his tentacles on you. Cherry wondered if he was anything like his parents. She pictured a short polite green alien woman wearing an apron like a woman in a 1950's sitcom, making him dinner and sending him off to alien school. Leonardo was very polite. He must have a very polite mother.

But maybe they hadn't… Maybe he hatched from an egg and was abandoned like a reptile on earth. Tiny Leonardo hatched from an egg, struggled to escape his own ravenous mother, starving as she labored to lay her eggs and now would eat her own young for nourishment. Even though Leonardo was a master swordsman and ninja, he was terribly naïve. Maybe he hadn't been raised by anybody at all and didn't learn anything at all about sexual predators on his homeworld.

She changed the channels at the speed of light, not stopping to watch any of them. Leonardo was fine. Leonardo was fine. His alien mama taught him right or else he had toughened up when his alien mama tried to eat him at birth. Either way, he would be fine.

Cherry got up and put on her shoes. She might have a heart attack putting up with this for the whole the night, picturing Hal Barton putting his hands on innocent Leonardo. Leonardo would undoubtedly chop off his head for it, but he would still be all big brown eyes when she found him afterwards.

She walked down the highway and checked her phone again. Cherry sent Leonardo a text asking, "U OK?"

She stared at the phone as a track drove past, the wake blowing her hair in her face. A passing truck full of men honked and hollered out the window at her as she stared at her phone, waiting in vain for a response.

An hour later she got a text back that read, "Fine. I'm doing yard work so far. He went to the outhouse. How are you?"

She pictured him standing there was an axe, sweating elegantly, while typing perfectly with his three fingered hand. He must have a super polite alien mother. How could a guy grow up that perfect if his mother tried to eat him when he broke out of his egg?

Why did she think this green alien reptile guy was so good looking? Maybe she had a mental problem. But that was just etic cultural bias! Humanity had programmed her to believe that only certain genetic traits were attractive. So what if Cherry thought he was kind of hot? It wasn't like anybody else had to know. If guys in her classes looked at pictures of anthropomorphic animal women in bikinis, then there was nothing wrong with Cherry. Leonardo was real, at least. She looked at the picture they'd taken in the bathroom together and nearly got run over by a U-Haul truck.

Cherry thought of a response to Leonardo's text for five minutes. How was she? Worried mostly. She deliberated on an answer that didn't make her sound like too much of a coward.

In the meantime he texted again. "I want to leave… :("

Leonardo was unhappy! Hal Barton must have touched him! "UR a lot sexier than Hal if it helps," she responded, automatically heading back towards the two-track leading to the trailer, attracted by the sad smiley of distress.

Leonardo didn't respond, so she supposed it wasn't any comfort.

* * *

It would have been a pleasant walk in a cool forest, birds singing and flowers blooming, ferns carpeting the forest. Except that Cherry knew that she was headed towards a frowning ninja employed by a Squirrel Butcher and it ruined the scenery. She spent most of the walk picturing baby Leonardo being eaten by his mother or else molested by Hal Barton or the ninja assassin's head flying off in her dorm room.

He was probably just chopping wood and annoyed that he hadn't been able to go in the trailer to look for the placemat yet. Maybe listening to Hal Barton tell boring stories about getting rejected from the Korean War for yelling at his drill sergeant.

By this time, the sun went down and the trees cast long shadows. The black of twilight mingled with the green and she paused as she heard something rustling in the bushes.

She texted him again: "whats going on now?"

There was no response and she walked a little faster, realizing that the light from a scary guy's trailer in the backwoods full of dead animals was much less terrifying than black shadowy woods full of scary noises. A friendly alien ninja waited at the trailer.

Cherry had never bought the hunting knife to castrate Hal Barton. Maybe she could use a knife lying around near one of his squirrel soufflés or one of Leonardo's katanas. She imagined herself epically wielding his ancient swords and receiving his undying gratitude for saving him. Then she imagined herself passing out as soon as she'd cut Hal Barton or else cutting off her own hand in the attempt and decided to leave the sword wielding to the expert.

She fumbled in the dark, loudly trampling undergrowth, as she held on to trees for guidance. Her phone battery had died at least an hour ago and she nervously hoped she hadn't received any panicked messages. Although she knew he wouldn't have asked her for help because she was pretty useless compared to him. She groped at the rough tree bark as she stumbled through the carpet of mossy ferns and pine needles at her feet. The ground stank like rotting life.

Yellow light shone dimly through the trees and she stopped for a second, filling with dread. What if she found his dead body or something worse?

Cherry crept through the yard, every footstep falling on a dry twig. As she got closer to the trailer, she could hear Leonardo's voice, clear and stern as if in the middle of a full-force lecture. Hal Barton stood against the window, his hands on his shapeless hips, body language annoyed.

She sighed. At least Leonardo wasn't buried behind the outhouse.

Just as Cherry decided to sneak into the van and wait until Leonardo was released from his duty in the morning, suddenly Leonardo's voice rose with a flavor of aggression that she hadn't heard before and froze, muscles seizing with fear of him for the first time.

She hadn't even really been afraid of him when he'd decapitated someone in front of her. Cherry hurried to the trailer, hovering in the long grass pointlessly, flicking away a grasshopper that landed on her shoulder.

And then she heard glass break and bits of window tinkled into her hair. Leonardo yelled with surprise and the trailer rocked. The tree branches rustled as if in a brisk wind and Cherry could hear other objects falling and breaking inside the trailer. Had Hal Barton just set off a bomb?

Cherry sat still, her heart pounding and body unwilling to move for several seconds. The grasshopper flew away.

Leonardo was silent. Hal Barton grunted as if trying to move a heavy object.

She stumbled to her feet and crept to the trailer door, peaking through the gap at the bottom of the window where the tattered vinyl blind had been torn as if by a cat's claws. Everything inside the trailer was shredded. The walls were covered in deep gashes and one of the cupboard doors hung by one hinge. Cherry reached up for the doorknob and opened the door as quietly as possible, telling herself to channel her inner ninja and move silently. Don't belch or sneeze or fart or trip or faint and get Leonardo killed. If it was still alive.

Cherry moved inside the trailer just enough to see Leonardo on bed at a strange angle as if he'd been bowled over and Hal Barton stood over him with a zip tie in his hand and a few other objects strewn around him on the bed. Cherry could see blood sprayed along the back wall beyond Leonardo.

But Hal Barton didn't have a scratch.

"Too much talk," Hal Barton muttered as he fumbled with Leonardo, jerking him slightly.

Cherry picked up a heavy cast iron skillet full of animal intestines and swung it at the back of Hal Barton's head as hard as she could.

Hal Barton dropped to the floor like a big doughy brick and she made sure to drop the skillet on his face after he lay completely still on his back. She stepped over him to get to the bed, glancing at him in quiet panic in case he suddenly woke up and grabbed her ankles.

Leonardo lay on the bed with his eyes closed, his body covered in deep bloody gashes. She leaned over, her hands on her knees and fought off hyperventilation. She forced herself to concentrate on Leonardo's face, severely injured and unconscious and at the whim of the disgusting person on the floor behind her.

Leonardo's eyes fluttered open and he reached out stiffly, eyes rolling with confusion.

"Don't worry. I'm helping! I didn't pass out yet! What do you want?" Cherry asked as she clung to his blood covered arm, wondering how on earth she would get him to the van if he wasn't strong enough to walk.

His eyes rolled to some sexual devices scattered on the bed within his line of sight and then he looked back up at her with a pitiful expression of humiliation.

"Did he use any of these?" she asked, brushing them all to the floor, to clear them from his eyesight.

He shook his head no and winced only slightly, forcing himself to his feet, his knuckles propping up his weight on the bed. Leonardo stood like that for about thirty seconds, breathing deeply, his eyes shut. "I'll be okay… The keys are in my belt. Bring the van closer please…"

Cherry fumbled in his belt, feeling as though she had just violated his personal space and then hopped over Hal Barton's prone body and ran through the dark yard to the van, the damp grass whipping her legs as she ran.

She climbed into the driver's seat, feeling as though she was driving a tank.

Leonardo had limped out of the trailer and he leaned against it, holding one of his arms as he waited for her to pull the up closer to him. His katanas rattled between the seats in the van as she backed up beside him and then opened the door. Always the polite ninja. Won't go in armed to talk to an unarmed crazy person.

He pulled himself into the passenger seat and then groaned with pain, but he closed his eyes and breathed deeply again. "Go, please…" he said, hardly managing more than a whisper.

Cherry searched for the switch to the headlights and accidentally turned on the windshield wipers. "Don't worry… don't worry…" she muttered, her voice shaking, as she fumbled for the shift and finally reversed.

She drove recklessly down the highway, crossing the yellow line several times as she watched him in the passenger seat, holding onto dashboard as if he might lurch forward. Blood covered most of his skin. "Are you okay? What happened? Did he touch you? I need to get you somewhere safe! I can get a different room after we're far away!"

"No…" he said, his eyes half open. "He knows… it doesn't matter… Just call my sister…"

Leonardo fell forward against the dashboard with a nauseating crash, his eyes still half-opened.

Cherry pulled onto the shoulder and hit the brakes so suddenly that his body slumped further out of the seat and his katanas rolled under her feet. She took off her seatbelt and pushed him backwards into his seat. His head lolled to the side. His sister lived hours away. How could she keep him alive in the meantime? Her stomach gurgled with impending nausea as she wiped his blood from her hands and onto her jeans. "Wake up! Wake up!" she cried, her voice clogging with tears as she berated him for his weakness.

His eyes fluttered and he stared vacantly for a minute before blinking a few times. "Did you call…"

"No, I'm going to take you to my mother's house. She only lives twenty minutes away and she's in Las Vegas right now. Nobody will be home. She's a nurse so she'll have all the stuff we need to fix you. Did he touch you? Why did he have all those gross things on the bed with you? Did he hurt you? Well, that's a stupid question. Of course he did! I mean, did he touch you…?"

Leonardo pushed himself slowly into his seat, not betraying a hint of pain. "I don't want to talk about it."

She choked a little and then put the van into drive. "Don't worry. I'll drive really fast and we'll go to my house. We'll get you fixed and then we can eat and sleep and I'll give you a lap dance when you're better. Okay! But you can't get a lap dance if you're dead!" she babbled, her voice high and tense. Headlights flashed at her from the opposite side of the highway and she watched the middle line, disoriented.

"I don't want a lap dance…" he said vaguely, searching his pockets for his phone.

"Why not?!" she said, too frightened to hide her disappointment that he wasn't thrilled to experience her skills of pseudo-seduction.

"I'd do more than watch…" he said, reaching for a katana. He held onto the hilt, rubbing it with his shaking bloody hand.

Cherry didn't know if it was a phallic gesture or if he wanted to hold a sharp object because he'd just been attacked. Maybe a little bit of both. "Okay, if you survive, I promise I'll give you a lap dance and you can touch all you want," she said, looking desperately for a gas station. They might at least have a first aid kit.

Leonardo's eyes blinked very slowly and she knew he wanted to pass out again. He said, "You couldn't keep up with me, pretty girl…"

"Yeah, okay…" she muttered, hardly listening to his flirty rantings. "I'm going to find a gas station and… buy you a tub of popcorn. Okay?" She wiped her nose and her wet cheeks with a shaking bare arm.

He dropped his katana. "I looked in his blue barrels… They wanted to go home…" His head drooped and his eyelids fluttered again.

"No! Don't do that!" Cherry slapped his arm violently until his head shot up and he blinked rapidly.

He didn't talk until she finally reached a dimly light gas station. The van lurched back and forth like a leaky canoe as she hit every pothole in the cracked pavement. "Are you okay, sweetie?" she asked softly. She put the van in park and unfastened her seatbelt, climbing in between the front seats. Blood sopped out of his seat and stained the floor around him.

He glanced at her, his eyes glazed. "Did that guy rape me…?" he asked, looking around as if he couldn't see. "Raph… I need to call him…"

"Who is that?" She suddenly realized that he might be gay and her stomach clenched irrationally. What did it matter? Good for Raph.

Leonardo fumbled for his phone and smeared blood all over the screen of his phone. Cherry gently took it out of his hand and said, "I think your phone is broken. Do you remember his number?"

He shook his head no. "My brother gets scared without me… Hal Barton knows your numbers… It's pointless… I failed again, see… Sensei… What if he gives me away?" And his eyes filled with childlike tears.

"Hey! Don't worry! I'm sure your boss won't fire you over this. Just stay awake. I'm going in to buy you some supplies." She leaned over and brushed off his sweaty cheek and kissed it, hoping it conveyed reassurance.

"…I can't fight that guy…"

She opened the van door, hastened by his noble despair and blood loss and hurried into the gas station, hoping that the attendant didn't notice all of the blood stains. Cherry wiped her mouth on the bottom of her t-shirt, getting rid of the blood and sweat, but the only thing that the spotty teenage boy behind the counter noticed was her momentarily visible midriff.

She grabbed a prepackaged first-aid kit and as many random boxes of medical supplies as she could carry in both arms without bothering to read the labels.

Hopefully, a whole grocery back of supplies should do it. But when she got to back to the van and awkwardly tried to open the driver's side door with her hands burdened with her wallet and a heavy bag, she realized that Leonardo wasn't in the passenger seat. She quickly found the agility to get the door open, out of sheer necessity, and jumped inside.

She glanced in the back and saw that he was sitting up in the lotus position, eyes closed, trying to meditate. Cherry said, "I have stuff to help fix you up. Are you okay?"

He looked strangely ancient, meditating and covered in blood. She needed to ask him real questions about his cultural heritage instead of making it all up in her head. Leonardo opened his eyes and said, "Hal Barton read your placemat and memorized the formula. I tried to talk to him…" His eyes fluttered and he tipped forward, catching himself on fours.

Cherry jumped into the back of the van and caught him in time to gently lean his weight against her. "Don't worry about that stuff now. I'm going to clean you up a little and then we'll go to my mother's house and I'll put you to bed. Okay? And then when you're better I'll dance and you can touch me all over."

"…buried under the trailer…" he mumbled quietly into her shoulder as she rubbed hydrogen peroxide on his wounds.

"I know. It's okay," she whispered, wiping the dried blood off his arms. "He just wanted to scare you."

Leonardo shifted stiffly against her. "I need to get up. I can't take a break like this. What if he… He's going to go cut up little boys…" He fell heavily into her again, his hot cheek against her shoulder.

"No, he won't. Calm down," she said, rubbing his arm for a while before cleaning his wounds again. "Sorry, I don't know what I'm doing. My mom's a nurse and she loves blood and guts. I'm trying not to pass out here."

After about half an hour, she managed to foce Leonardo to move back into the passenger's seat. As soon as she started out on the highway again, his head drooped and he fell asleep.

Cherry rolled down the window and let the cold night air keep her awake. She recognized the dull dirt roads and every gnarled tree through the corn fields and fallen down barns. Finally, they turned the corner onto the last road and she heard dogs barking.

"Wake up!" she shook Leonardo awake and his eyes rolled slightly as he forced himself awake. "We're here! Come on! Let's go to bed."

He didn't protest or speak at all as she helped him into the house in the pitch dark. The stupid electric bird clock ticked near the door. A different kind of bird call chirped loudly over and over on the hour and Cherry remembered taking out the batteries and hiding them from her mother because it used to wake her up every hour.

She grabbed the clock off the wall and pulled out the batteries, stuffing them in her pocket.

Cherry led him up the stairs and realized that he didn't seem to have any idea where he was. The whole house was dark, but he moved as if it were noon. She steered him into her old bedroom and wished that her mother had hidden all her plastic horses and Jonas Brothers posters after she left.

Leonardo weakly went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. "Blood…" he said, as he stiffly removed his gear and dropped it on the floor, leaving blood smears on the linoleum.

Cherry held the shower curtain open, hovering next to the shower in case he passed out again and they both silently watched the red water flow softly down the drain. She pulled out a towel and he stood vacantly leaning against the bathroom wall, eyes rolling and weight tilting forward, as she dried him off.

"Okay, let's get to bed." Cherry made the bed faster than she had ever made a bed in her life and then quickly changed into an old night gown that she found in her dresser without bothering to hide her nudity from him.

She climbed into bed and wedged herself against him, into his body heat.

Leonardo weakly moved his arms around her and said, "You're going to kill us all…" as he closed his eyes again, sleeping instantly.


	6. Yin and Yang

_From the glamorous life of Connie Nervegas: trying to picture epic Leo bleeding to death while surrounded by dirty dishes and Klunk uses the litter box two feet away._

_I sat here writing this chapter for at least four hours straight, by the way..._

Cherry didn't sleep at all and after two hours of vigilance over the bleeding ninja in her bed, every cell in her body froze with paralyzing fear. She had no idea what to do. Letting him sleep seemed like the nice and natural thing to do, but keeping him awake and stitching up his oozing gashes seemed like the smart thing to do.

She hadn't passed out yet, probably out of sheer need to stay with him.

He slept with his mouth open slightly and she touched his arm every few minutes, waiting for an attack. But he didn't stir. Finally, after an hour, she shook his shoulder, deciding that it was time for the smart thing and not the nice and natural thing.

"Hmmm?" he muttered as she nearly rolled him onto his shell with the force of shaking him with both hands.

"I think you should sit up and stay awake now. I need to help you sew yourself up. Are you sure you can't go to a hospital?" Cherry pulled the covers down and saw spots of blood seeping into the white sheets.

Leonardo dutifully forced his eyes open and pushed himself into a sitting position. "I can't go to the hospital… Do you have any… iron… fluids…" His head tipped to the side as he spoke and Cherry tapped his knee with her fist to wake him up again. He blinked and looked around the room. "Where are we?"

"My mom's house, remember? She's in Las Vegas with a bunch of other crazy old women. I'll look around the house. I doubt if she has medical stuff here, now that I think of it." What a stupid idea. Of course her mother didn't keep hospital supplies in her house, just because she was a nurse.

He didn't answer and looked at the bed sheets, spotted with his blood. "Sorry…"

"Don't worry about it." Cherry sat up next to him, leaning against him. She couldn't bring herself to move very far away. "What happened with that guy? He must have been really fast to get the jump on you."

Leonardo looked away as if she'd said something extremely embarrassing. "He wasn't fast. He didn't really do anything."

Cherry nodded, although she didn't understand.

"He didn't move. It just happened. I was unarmed and frustrated and lost my temper for a second. He didn't blink or move or raise a weapon. I don't know what happened. I don't remember being attacked at all." Leonardo glanced about the room. "Where is my phone? I have to check in with my brothers."

Cherry shuffled into the bathroom, hoping that she didn't look like an old lady in her mother's nightgown and then reminded herself that he probably didn't care. She pulled his phone out of his leather utility belt and covered her mouth, suppressing a wretch as his brown clotted blood smeared her hand. "Your phone's broken, remember? I told you that in the van while you were hitting on me."

"Oh, sorry about that." Cherry heard motion from the bed and trotted back into the bedroom, positive that he'd just collapsed and fallen on the floor.

But Leonardo was standing up, leaning against the dresser. He said, his voice faint, "I need to sew myself up. Bring me my belt please. Do you have any… fluids… I don't know. I feel very nauseous."

"Just stay still! You don't have to get up!" Cherry took his wrist and shook his arm, unwilling to shove him towards the bed in case he fell over.

"I need to go back and restrain him somehow. I can't kill him. I'm not sure how to get near him though. You should stay here. I'll come back and get you once I find him." Leonardo hobbled weakly towards the bathroom, pausing to hold onto the door frame and breathe deeply.

Cherry followed him, gently holding onto him as if she had enough strength to hold him up.

"Thank you," he said. "I need the pouch on the back of my belt. I'm sorry I wasn't coherent enough to remember that I have this. I should have done this right away."

Leonardo sat on the edge of the bathtub and Cherry fumbled with the leather straps, looking for a pouch. "I don't see anything. It might have fallen off."

"Okay okay okay," he said, sounding rather foggy, his eyes closing as he leaned forward and then pushed himself back upright. "Just… does your mother have sewing materials? Thread?"

Cherry ran out of the bathroom and back downstairs, trying to ignore the bloody hand print in the bathroom doorway as she fled. Her mother didn't do anything domestic. Of course she wouldn't have a needle and thread. Mom couldn't be helpfully domestic, even if it saved somebody's life.

Just as Cherry was about to run upstairs and tell Leonardo that she would drive to Dollar General and buy him a needle and thread, a pair of headlights lit up the pitch black living room, illuminating the camouflage patterned living room curtains and she heard a familiar and dreaded car engine. Unmistakably loud and redneck.

As a teenager, Cherry dreaded that sound. This time she ran outside in her nightgown, smeared with blood, waving her arms on the porch.

A red, white and blue spangled muscle car from the 1970's with a huge engine painted with the words GRANDPA'S GHOST roared into the driveway and braked suddenly, the engine idling for a minute.

Cherry ran to her mother's car and knocked hysterically on the tinted car window. "Mom! Mom! I need help!"

The window rolled down and a middle aged blond woman with a deeply wrinkled face and harsh voice leaned out towards Cherry and shouted, "What happened? Are you hurt? Did you have an accident?"

"No! My friend is hurt! He's upstairs! Do you have supplies to sew him up? He can't go to the hospital." Cherry stood back as her mother recklessly pulled into her parking spot under the sign mounted on a scruffy oak tree that read "PRINCESS PARKING ONLY: ALL OTHERS WILL BE TOAD."

Her mother stepped out of the car and slammed the car door. "Well, he's going to jail if there's a warrant out for him! You brought some drug dealer to my house? Where is he?"

"He isn't a drug dealer! He's alien or something!" Cherry followed her into the house, galloping to keep up as her mother turned on every light she passed, revealing the cluttered country house covered in Bud Light and John Deere memorabilia.

"An alien? Well, I can't house an illegal alien either. Maybe…" Her mother followed the trail of blood droplets on the carpet to Cherry's old bedroom and she heard her mother's voice end as she finally reached the bathroom.

Leonardo said politely, "I'm sorry to make such a mess. I do apologize. Please don't call the police or the hospital. I can't be found. I'd flea but I can't really move. But I'm okay…"

Cherry didn't like the high pitched tone of voice. He sounded anxious and not at all like Mr. In-Control-Ninja that she'd met a few days ago.

He continued babbling, "I'll leave as soon as I can. I have to get home…"

"You're not going anywhere!" her mother said, her voice hardened by years of emergency room service and cigarettes. "Just don't move. Evelyn, get that big tackle box from my bedroom. The one in my closet next to the box with the ammunition for your dad's shotgun."

Cherry run numbly down the hallway towards her mother's bedroom, wondering if she should cut the phone lines in case she tried to call the police and hand Leonardo over to the authorities.

Well, what happened if the police found him anyway? Maybe he could summon the mothership full of his siblings to pick him up and rescue him.

* * *

Cherry sat behind the wheel of Grandpa's Ghost, gripping the musty vinyl steering wheel with tight knuckles, her eyes still blurry white from the sound of her mother's needle lacing through Leonardo's wet flesh. He had thanked her mother politely as she jabbed the needle into him, never making a sound to complain.

But Cherry had passed out in the hallway, visualizing his green skin stuck with a sewing needle over and over… thread pulling out of his bloody skin… And then staggered onto her feet and went outside into the dull dawn light on the porch.

She wasn't wearing any panties under her nightgown and mosquitoes swarmed between her exposed legs so she clumsily hid in her mother's car and sat behind the steering wheel, staring at the horizon, wondering if Leonardo had died while she uselessly watched the sun coming up over the corn field across the road.

After about an hour, her mother knocked on the car window and shouted through the glass, "Your friend is patched up now and won't bleed to death. Sitting out here doing nothing while he was on death's door huh? Some things never change."

Cherry pictured a white hospital corridor for a few seconds, but blocked it out.

"I didn't want to get in the way," she said, opening the door of Grandpa's Ghost, not bothering to wait for her mother to move aside and she heard it whack her in the kneecaps.

"Shit! You're so careless. He wants to see you. Where did you meet him? He's really polite. Is he your boyfriend?" Her mother shut the car door and her injured tone morphed into delight as soon as she changed the topic to potential dating possibilities.

"Ugh! Mom!" Cherry headed towards the house, hoping she didn't see her face. "I'm not dating an alien!"

"Maybe that's the last place to find a good man," her mother said and then stood on the porch, pulling out a cigarette and hacking deeply.

* * *

Cherry watched Leonardo as he moved slowly with closed eyes, doing some kind of tai chi moves in her bedroom. "You couldn't even stay in bed an hour? What are you doing?"

He said without stopping or opening his eyes, "I'm thinking. I need to figure out what to do with Hal Barton. Do you have any ideas? You're the one who came up with the information that endangers the entire universe after all."

Cherry sat on the bed with crossed arms and said, "Well, you can't leave. You can just stay here and think."

She fumbled with her phone, reading emails from distant and uncaring teachers who hadn't missed her presence in class. She might as well not exist. She wanted to say something supportive. Maybe tell him that he could talk to her about whatever horrors he'd seen in the blue barrels last night. "You okay?"

Leonardo didn't answer and gracefully continued through his motions as if he hadn't heard her.

"There was some kind of bomb blast or something when you got hit. And I came in the trailer and he had creepy sex things all over the bed. Do you remember any of it?" She tossed her phone to the side and wished she had a textbook to read.

He didn't acknowledge her.

Cherry watched and wondered if the tai chi might rip his stitches. "Hey, could you show me how to do that too? Can we do it together? It's relaxing right?" Maybe asking Mr. Fighting-Machine for a lesson would get his attention.

Leonardo stopped moving and dizzily stumbled to the bed to sit down as soon as his concentration broke. He said, "I realize that my failure to anticipate the attack last night…"

"You mean, when that crazy guy Jedi force blasted you out of nowhere. Yeah, you should be totally ashamed you didn't see the frickin' obvious that he could kill you without moving or anything!" she said, throwing her hands up.

"Anyway…" Leonardo said, as if he were alone, lecturing a lamp. "…I didn't perceive that attack coming and so I need to work on my soft battle skills. One cannot simply attack with a hard offense. That's just brute force. That's just… Raph!" He wrinkled his face and then continued. "Combat is about both perception of the opponent's incoming blows and then reacting to them with hard force. It's a give and take."

Cherry scratched her scalp and said, "Okay, so you didn't listen hard enough to his energy when he thought about attacking you. So you're not psychically attuned enough to the universe to read his mind that he was attacking you."

"Exactly!" Leonardo sagged a little, as if he'd missed a basic lesson in kindergarten. "So I'm going to practice tai chi and consider how this affects my combat skills and also the safety of those around me. Tai chi is the interaction of opposing forces." He stood up and showed her a few simple moves and she watched, transfixed at his grace.

She imitated him and he inspected her sternly. "Here is what you did wrong." Then he narrated everything that she had just done.

Cherry tried again, feeling as though she were slowly flapping her limbs in space.

"Much better," he said. "It helps if you understand the philosophy of yin and yang."

"They have a lot of Chinese philosophy on your home world?" she asked, feeling like a wobbly klutz as she nearly tipped over while standing on one leg. "You make it look so easy."

"Well, I normally train hours a day!" he said, not disguising his pride. "Yin is the passive force of energy in the universe and yang is the opposing force. All energy has an opposite. The bright hot energy of the male is balanced by the soft wet yield of the female and the same with dark and light and hard and soft and to understand the flow of life, we must understand how these opposites push and pull into each other."

Cherry stood with her mouth open for a second. "That was so hot…"

Leonardo blinked and then opened a window. "Is that better?"

"Not really…" Cherry sighed and said, "So what? You're going to do your sexy Zen exercises and then go back to see Hal Barton and get blasted into the face again and bleed to death alone this time?"

"Well, that isn't my first plan!" he said, rather aggressively. "That's why I'm doing tai chi! He told me that he read your placemat information and now it's 'his' and he can use it to serve the Mistress of Chaos. What does that mean?"

Cherry shrugged. It sounded vaguely familiar, like something from a nightmare that seemed silly upon waking memory. "Well, you can't leave without your lap dance first."

"I have other things on my mind." He resumed his gentle motions, closing his eyes again.

Cherry said, "I promised I'd give you a lap dance and if you intend to go get killed because you can't sit down for a few hours after nearly bleeding to death, then I am going to honor my promise and you're not going off to die until you've had your frickin' lap dance!"

He stopped and said with haughty annoyance, "I must concentrate on honing my martial arts skills so that I can prevent the end of the world. But I can see that my lap dance is more important than that. So please, interrupt me!"

Cherry pointed at the bed and said, "Sit down! You're not going anywhere until I give you a lap dance!"

He tapped his foot, mouth pursed with agitation. "Fine. Can you do it in fast forward to get it over with quickly?"

"No, it's all in the soft wet female yin, remember?" Cherry went to the bathroom and sought something sexier to wear than an old flannel nightgown and settled for putting on her panties, bra and a button up shirt that she hadn't worn since tenth grade. She'd left it hanging on the bathroom towel rack to dry five years ago and her mother had never bothered to move it. She shook out the dust and buttoned it on. "Okay, are you ready?"

"Turn the light off first," he said tensely from her bed. "I operate in the dark a lot."

"Okay, whatever." She turned off the light switch and then stood there frozen, trying to figure out her first approach, as if choreographing the first step in a fight.

He watched with his arms crossed. "What's wrong? Forget what to do?"

"No! There's no music." Cherry searched her old closet for a radio or a CD player. Finally, she found her old Hello Kitty boom box and put it on top of the bureau. She could feel Leonardo's eyes assessing every bit of her performance, probably giving her a letter grade.

She flicked through a pile of CD's in a stack on the floor and finally found something with a passably sexy beat and waited while the ancient CD player clicked, trying to pick up the song under the layers of dust.

Suddenly, everything felt strange and exposed. He sat on her bed, waiting, leaning back slightly on his hands, probably tired from moving around when he should be resting. Instead of throwing on her sexy power walk, she stood in front of him wringing her hands for a while and then climbed into his lap, facing him, deciding that she had better skip the overture.

The familiarity of the environment and intense expression on his unwilling face made the whole thing feel as though she were doing it for the first time, only on a ninja and not another half naked employee, both of them embarrassed and new to the job, laughing at their mutual failure.

She usually looked over the customer's shoulder at the wall, at her own blank expression in the glass behind his head or across the room at the exit sign, fantasizing about the moment when she left the building, planning her next essay in her head. But she looked him dead in his brown eyes, determined to win the battle this time.

He looked back in her eyes, hardly an inch away and didn't move at all as she settled her weight onto his legs. Don't touch the clients, she heard in her head. But this wasn't a client. This was a war of wills. As she reached for her first button, she felt his fingers there first, pulling the button from the hole.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice breaking the intensity of the moment.

"You said I could touch you, remember? And I hate this… passivity. What am I supposed to do here?" He unbuttoned the first and moved on to the second.

She wished he would stop. Eric Peterson hadn't even bothered undressing her when they were in the back of the truck behind the barn. "You're supposed to watch and get an erection and then give me a big tip."

Leonardo sneered gently and said, "I can do that for free. Why do I need your help?"

"It's entertainment." She ran a hand softly up his arm and shuddered as her fingers brushed past a few stitches, breaking her stride.

"I don't like false affection," he said, finishing her buttons, still looking her straight in the eye. He pulled her shirt off and tossed it on the floor.

She broke eye contact, flushing slightly. She regrouped and looked him in the eye again, so close she could feel his breath in her face. "Well, it's a different story down here," she said, rocking on his lap slightly.

"I need to go," he said dully after a few seconds, his expression hardened with determination that he wouldn't be the first to break.

"Who's stopping you?" she asked, leaning in and kissing his shoulder lightly. Maneuver backfire. She lingered too long and he didn't tell her to stop.

What next?

A loud vehicle roared suddenly outside the house and he seized her by the shoulders and then tossed her sideways onto the bed off away from his lap, awkwardly trying to cover his immodesty with a bed sheet as he ran to the window to inspect the new threat.

She turned off the sexy music and composed herself. Then she threw on the musty unsexy nightgown and played loud mariachi music and tried to remember her times tables.

Leonardo let out a string of passionate Japanese vulgarity. At least, it sounded rather vulgar, even though she didn't understand any of it. He oscillated between protecting his exposure and flying downstairs to accost the vehicle idling loudly in the driveway and after a few minutes of deep breathing he dropped the sheet and ran off down the hallway. He was pretty fast for a person who had nearly bled to death only a few hours ago.

Cherry watched out the window as a semi-truck, blackened with soot and dented as if it had just withstood a bomb attack, pulled up slowly alongside the grey van that belonged to Leonardo's sister. Leonardo knocked aggressively at the driver's side window, shouting at the driver.

The semi-truck door opened and another green alien, approximately Leonardo's height and stature, but more muscled and with a distinctively macho posture, leapt from the semi-truck and punched Leonardo in the face. He staggered backwards and then the newcomer seemed to hold up his hands in apology and helped him back up.

She ran down the stairs, past her mother snoring like a hibernating bear in her bedroom and out the front door towards the idling semi-truck.

Leonardo shouted, "…my orders! Damn you! Can't you listen to anything?! Keep the bomb away from her means keep the bomb away from her! Not put it in a semi-truck and drive it across state to her house!"

She tripped down the front steps and into the driveway towards the semi-truck and the arguing brothers. The newcomer looked her over, up and down; distant and too-familiar at the same time. "That her?"

"Yes," Leonardo looked inside the semi-cab. "Is he tied securely? You look like you just drove through a warzone."

"Something like that…" his brother muttered, clearly not wanting to go into detail about his adventure.

After a brief discussion in Japanese with a lot of frantic arm waving and threats of physical violence from the body language exhibited, Leonardo headed towards the house, shaking his head in disbelief.

His brother lingered outside, kicking the dusty driveway, nudging a stone along the ground. Then he said to Cherry, "Listen, bitch. I'm not a nice guy. I would gladly pull out all your teeth and your fingernails real slow until you told me what I want to know. But he's the gentleman and has to do it all the honorable way, so we can all incinerate, knowing that we all went out for the sake of honor. Well, fuck that! You tell him what we need to know. Then all this is over and we go home and you can get back to your street corner. Got it?"

She turned around headed towards the house, ignoring him.

As the screen door slammed shut behind her, she heard a pleading hostage falling to the dirt in the driveway and the semi-truck engine stopped, the cab door slammed and Leonardo's brother said, "Well, now we're going to spend some quality time together. If Leo doesn't want me to torture her for information, I guess you'll do instead. Gotta stay busy right?"

She looked out the living room window, watching Leonardo's brother drag a man dressed in a white lab coat toward the grey abandoned barn on the edge of their property.

"Hal Barton told me not to look in the barrels and I did anyway," Leonardo said, from only a few inches away. "Sometimes I wonder if we're just killers. But I know now that we're different. We don't… enjoy it… the way he does…"

His brother tossed the hostage in the lab coat into the barn and then shut the door after him. He pulled out a tool from his belt and locked the door shut. Cherry could see the door moving as the hostage inside tried in vain to force himself free.

"What was in the barrels?" she asked, wondering if she shouldn't ask and let him forget.

"Human heads." He moved towards the front door and berated his brother for his rough treatment of the hostage. His brother argued that the hostage wasn't on vacation and that he wouldn't rough him up too badly.

"How can I get information from people if we treat them like guests?! I need to put some fear into the bastard somehow, don't I? You never argued about it before. Just shut up and work on your own project over there." The brother gestured roughly at Cherry with his thumb.

Leonardo watched her for a second, his eyes wide. "We're working on it together. You see, we were about to meditate together to possibly get an answer that way."

"Oh, yeah!" she said heartily. "Let's get our meditation on, Leonardo!"

"She calls you by your whole name, huh?" his brother snarled as Leonardo and Cherry headed back up the stairs together, as if his name was a sacred oath, only to be spoken by his relatives.

"Grow up!" Leonardo hissed back down the stairs at his brother and then shoved Cherry into her bedroom and shut the door behind them.

"He's charming," she said. "Meditate together? Will that get sexy?"

Leonardo cleared his throat and sat on the bed cross-legged and didn't answer. He gestured for her to join him. Cherry sat across from him, imitating his posture and he took both her hands in his. He said, "Now, this may feel strange. Just close your eyes and clear your mind and relax. I'll do the work. I can feel your energy if we both meditate hard enough. I'm new at this, so it may not work at all. But if it does, you'll be able to feel my presence and I'll feel yours. Maybe I'll be able to work out some of the information locked in your head or at least take a quick tour and understand what's happening."

Her throat swelled up with dread and she nearly pulled her hands away.

Leonardo clenched them in his hands tighter. "Don't worry. It'll be fine. Close your eyes please."

She closed her eyes, resigned to the inevitability of it all.


	7. Nothing Behind Me

_I was going to wait to post more chapters until I finished the outline, but I got bored and gave up and decided to do another chapter to get moving because I lumped things around on the outline so I could get to the fun part, so what's the use of the outline if I don't follow it anyway._

_Getting abstract with it again. It's fun. I hope it makes sense. No, I was not stoned when I wrote the first part._

_I've seen the history of the world, back to the beginning. I'd like to show you_, she thought.

Leonardo evaded her, trapped the immediacy of regret.

She nudged his essence again towards black empty forever with sparkling lights. All the knowledge and skill in the universe was a complete lie. His life's work meant nothing because it equaled nothing and he should stop fighting and realize the truth. The energy of nothing will kill the universe, forcing everything to the edges of space and time and nothing. The end of all things. Nothing equaled quiet. No more problems. No future. Peace.

But Leonardo relived the moment when she kissed his shoulder. He liked it and didn't want it to end. She knew he'd never really felt that kind of affection and saw his life flying back down a dark tunnel to a blank beginning as if he had suddenly existed with a burst of consciousness. That must be wrong. His energy couldn't come from nothing. Cherry forced herself through him again, drifting fast down dark spaces full of violence, eventually slamming into a wall of nothingness.

They both stood next to Cherry's bed, watching the moment, frozen in time. He silently reached for her bra as she kissed his shoulder, wrapped quietly and anxiously around each other.

"This moment is unimportant," she reminded him, still slamming herself into the void of his beginning and finding nothing.

He watched them both, peacefully at one for a few poor seconds. "This is an important moment to me. If it isn't important to you, then why did I find you here too?"

Cherry could feel him pushing into her, searching for something.

She remembered the moment of Real Birth. That plank time second when energy overtook darkness and her shame grew to the edges of the boundless creation and she wanted to devour him in darkness, absorbing him back into the truth of that moment. So male and hot and hard… Repulsive creature.

But that wasn't Cherry. That was Chaos' thoughts. She pushed the negativity of Chaos away and watched herself and Leonardo in the past, wrapped softly around each other. She asked him, "What happens next?"

They watched themselves, caught in the cyclical memory of the past. "Next I apologize," he said. "I know you are lonely. You're my friend." But his widened and filled with fear, like a child seeing a monster in its closet. "What is that?" he asked, pointing behind her at something she couldn't see.

Cherry knew that he would find the answer to the problem if he pushed hard enough. "It's nothing," she said, pulling him away from the memory, Chaos crawling behind them, snarling a warning at Leonardo.

She felt his heart thrum through her hands as she hurried them through a crowd in GIRLS XXX. He stopped to watch her dancing against the pole, eyes dead, focusing on the EXIT sign. But this familiar place existed in Leonardo's memory and he pushed her away from his memories, watching her from the dark corners of the club night after night, texting his brothers on his observations, making crude jokes that she must have heard this brilliant information from a patron and passed it off as her own work. Cherry filled with momentary rage and felt Leonardo's hands burn in hers, he hushed her and said, "I'm sorry. I was ignorant. Don't give in to that. Tell her to get back!"

Cherry pulled Leonardo away through the crowd away from the red burning eyes of Chaos as she silently mouthed her hateful truth at Cherry; freeze the hard proud blood out of that thing you drag along with you Cherry, Chaos thought.

"This is all very confusing," Leonardo said, his hands stinging against her palms. "I see the red eyed Nothing and she shouts, but there's only silence. It's so dark and far away in here. I need to get out of here and away from that thing!"

Cherry said, "You're so still and strong…" She closed her eyes and fed on his steady energy, quieting her guilty emptiness and desire.

His hands still stung, but his heart quieted, the fear quelled.

She drove to the cemetery and searched vacantly for her father's grave. She didn't go to his funeral and her mother wouldn't tell her they'd buried him. She didn't find the grave and went home. She came back and searched again and didn't find it.

Leonardo didn't like the cemetery. Too much time spent creating funerals for other people.

"Why are you here? Why are you watching this?" she screamed at him as she watched herself wandering the cemetery with bright pink hair in a cold evening mist, searching for a grave that didn't exist. Her mother told her the next year on her father's birthday that she'd had him cremated and spread his ashes while Cherry had been out drinking all night with Eric Peterson.

Leonardo's brown eyes widened with shock and sweet emotional innocence, absent of the killer. His true spirit. Helpful and quiet. Wanting to please. Forced into action by circumstances.

He worked alone, training, exercising; feeling his muscles growing stronger. His brothers fell farther and farther behind him. Every day he looked back at the road and added another pace between them.

And then she was back in her bedroom, staring at Leonardo, his hands withdrawn from hers. She reached out in front of her, hands still half-clasped around nothing. "What's wrong?" she asked.

He said, "It's… not relevant… any of my…" Leonardo rubbed his palms against his knees. "You really did burn me! For real, I mean! Not just in your head!"

Cherry leaned forward and grabbed his hands. Both of his palms glowed pink with heat. She stiffly rolled off the bed, joints cracking as if she'd sat still for hours. She rummaged in the bathroom medicine cabinet for burn cream.

He followed her and lingered in the doorway. "Do you know where she spread the ashes? Maybe I can ask and we can go there…" he said, his voice quiet with hesitation.

Cherry slammed the medicine cabinet door shut and tossed the burn cream roughly in his direction. He grasped it easily as it flew towards his head. "Yeah, like I want to relive any of that shit! It doesn't matter. Ashes are just… carbon, you know. Did you get any useful information or did you just get to probe around?"

"I saw a dark female creature. Like a burning shadow with red eyes and she screamed at me. I know she hated me. Just because I'm male or something… But she wasn't a person. She was… nothing…" He rubbed burn cream on his palms and placed the tube back on the edge of the bathroom sink.

Cherry's mother shouted harshly up the stairs, voice full of gravel, "Evelyn! Leo! You have breakfast waiting! Get your asses down here! Your brother's waiting! What are you two doing? Do you need a condom?"

"Mom!" Cherry tried to shove Leonardo out of the bathroom, but he just stared, eyes narrowed as if condom usage had been her idea somehow. After he left the room, nose slightly in the air, she threw her clothes on as fast as possible, then pushed past Leonardo as he timidly crept down the stairs towards the sound of Cherry's mother and his brother laughing loudly in the kitchen. Cherry shouted, "That isn't funny, mom!"

Cherry's mother placed a Thanksgiving turkey platter covered in bacon and sausage on the table and Leonardo's brother helped himself to at least a third of the offered food, grabbing it with his bare hands.

"Manners, Raph…" Leonardo chastised through clenched teeth as he politely pulled out Cherry's chair for her.

"Oh, thanks!" she said, unable to contain her shock at the chivalrous gesture. "Mom, you can't just scream at me about using condoms when guests are around! It's not even funny when it's just us! And it it's definitely not funny at family Christmas!"

"Oh, shut up and eat your bacon!" her mother said, as she sat down and then muttered out of the side of her mouth to Raph, "I told you it would get them down here fast. And grandpa thought it was hilarious."

Cherry took a few pieces of bacon as Leonardo held the platter out to her before helping himself. "You were talking about me and cousin Gary! He's like forty five! It was disgusting!"

Raph chewed with his mouth open and shook with a laugh.

"You should come faster when I call for dinner then! Grandpa needs to eat at six so he can take his insulin!" Cherry's mother watched Leonardo picking at his meat. "What's the matter? You like your crispy or something?"

"No, it's fine, ma'am," he said half-heartedly. "I just want to thank you for saving my life earlier. I can't express my gratitude."

"Really?" she said, eating sausage with one hand, her other hand holding a burning cigarette. "I have a bunch of wood that needs to be chopped. Could you manage that?"

"I would be honored, ma'am," Leonardo said.

"I guess you'll have done you're good deed for the day," Raph said with a mouthful of half-chewed sausage. "What's the matter, Fearless? Don't enjoy your hearty meal? You're treating your hostage a lot better than I'm treating mine. I thought we were supposed to concentrate on the job here. Not…"

Leonardo clanked his mug full of orange juice heavily on the table. Cherry suspected that normally he would have lectured Raph mercilessly. He said to his brother, in a cool voice and with narrowed eyes, "In the spirit of Buddha, I eat anything that my host offers. You should listen to Sensei a little harder when he talks about it. You look like a pig."

Raph ate half hunched over his plate, chewing with his mouth wide open, both his arms taking up most of his side of the table. Cherry's mother sat back in her chair with her legs crossed, smoking her cigarette for breakfast.

Cherry looked at her watch and realized that it was only eleven o'clock in the evening. "Mom, why did you make breakfast for everybody in the middle of the night?"

"I couldn't sleep anymore and the big guy was hungry."

Raph nodded emphatically to solidify his position as the big guy.

"I was thinking about visiting wherever you spread dad's ashes," Cherry said, not eating anything that she had placed on her plate.

Her mother blew smoke towards the open screen door and said, "I don't remember where I spread his ashes."

"You do too remember! How do you forget something like that?" Cherry shouted. She felt Leonardo's hand gently press a warning against her thigh. She took a breath and said, "But I guess it doesn't really matter that much." She pushed herself up from the table and lingered in the doorway, hoping Leonardo followed her upstairs to her room.

Leonardo seemed to understand the gesture and glanced at his brother, who shook his head minutely. Leonardo said to her, "I need to stay with my brother the rest of the night. We need to attend to his hostage."

"You three can sleep in that spare room. There's a wheel chair in the corner and a lot of quilting racks. I can move them if they're in the way." Her mother kept smoking, looking out the screen door towards the barn.

Raph stood up, wiping his greasy hands on his legs. "I think I want to get some sleep. I'll haul the asshole upstairs. Think we got time to sleep before the end of the world, Fearless? I been up for a week straight and I want to be fresh for tomorrow, you know."

"I suppose." Leonardo stood up and bowed to her mother. "Thank you for the food, Mrs…."

"Diane. I mean, Mrs. Hyde." She blew a plume of smoke in Leonardo's direction.

Cherry headed towards her room, following Raph up the stairs and heard Leonardo making polite promises to her mother to chop as much wood as possible when he wasn't needed interrogating the hostage tomorrow.

"Guess you have to sleep alone tonight," Raph said, scowling at her as he disappeared into the guest room. She heard the vague sounds of pleading and moaning and a swift blow and command from Raph as he entered the room.

She lingered in the hallway, waiting for Leonardo. He sighed heavily as he met her and said, "We'll work more on figuring out your issues tomorrow. Just don't go anywhere. Understand?" All the friendly tone had changed back to the impatience of the first few minutes of their meeting.

"Okay, whatever," she said. "Not like I have anything to do like work or exams tomorrow or anything important, Mr. No-Job." Cherry slammed her bedroom door, hoping it bruised his pretty face.

* * *

Stay here? Stay here? Cherry sat on her bed, legs crossed, reading The Communist Manifesto. Well, she stared at the same page for twenty minutes and decided that she understood just as much as if she had really read the book. Stay here?

Leonardo. Mr. Bossy-Pants. Well, he didn't wear pants. A prisoner in her own house? Not likely! She could go anywhere she wanted. Cherry imagined pelting him feminist speeches in the morning, smiling triumphantly as he admitted his wrongs as a bossy alien ninja.

Why wait until morning? Cherry had an exam tomorrow. She would just knock on his door, wake him up and berate him for being a chauvinistic ass who thought he could keep her locked in her room like that woman in The Yellow Wallpaper and then steal Grandpa's Ghost and head back into the city. She might make it just in time to take her exam. And it wasn't like he needed her company anymore. Now he had Raph to eat bacon like a Neanderthal and take up all the leg space in the car with his overt displays of machismo.

Cherry put her books in her backpack and found her shoes under the bed. Her chest clenched when she realized that his blood crusted her shoes, as if she'd waded through a red lake. His blue mask lay in the trash, now brown. Well, Raph could protect him when he tracked down Hal Barton again and he mentally hacked him to pieces like a meat slicer.

The old floorboards of the farmhouse creaked under her feet as she attempted a quiet escape to freedom and she decided not to chance any unnecessary noise outside the door of the sleeping ninjas and hurried down the stairs in the dark, nearly tripping over her a butter churn painted with a marijuana leaf pattern. Her dad bought it at a yard sale and thought it was hilarious.

Her mother usually left the car keys under the driver's side floor mat and Cherry found them immediately. She turned the key and fumbled for good driving music. A fast drive on a still hot night. Who needed sex? Not Cherry. Didn't need to make out with the polite Buddhist alien if he wanted to sleep in the other bedroom with his brother. Not that she had planned on it. She'd imagined propositioning him, but repeatedly told herself that it was just vain fantasy. _So, Leonardo_, she would say as she closed the bedroom door behind her. _Uh… something something about being sexy…_

She blasted a local top forty station and turned up the volume as she remembered stripping to the same song at least twenty times. As she turned the key and the engine rumbled like a snoring giant, she checked the gas meter and gladly found it full. Grandpa's Ghost drank gasoline like water and she didn't want to pay for more than a full tank.

Grandpa's Ghost spun dirt in two trails as she stepped on the gas pedal as hard as she could, speeding down the driveway, the hot breeze filling the car and whipping her hair in her face. The open road. No worries. No bossy ninjas.

After ten minutes, she found the highway and let the tires spin in the intersection, smelling burning rubber and laughed out loud at her own recklessness. The trees rushed by in a green and orange blur of variegated color and a mist of bugs splattered the windshield, bits of their bodies sprinkling her face and bare arm like tiny shards of glass.

Grandpa's Ghost sailed over a steep hill and her guts jolted excitedly into her diaphragm, the car leaving the ground for a few sweet seconds like a roller coaster. Her mother's cooking and father's ashes flew into the distance at 80 miles per hour.

Familiar sights flashed past in a second and she smiled, knowing that nobody knew her in the city. No Evelyn. No Mitch's daughter with the pink hair. Just Cherry the honor's student and whore who dances naked for money. She passed the grain elevator and nearly clipped a semi-truck as it backed awkwardly into the road in an attempt to park its heft under the grain output.

The car idled at an intersection next to a house famous because it's living room wall lay only four feet from the road and four cars had crashed into the living in the past ten years. Cherry laughed at the large rock placed in the corner of the yard mere feet from the site of usual impact. As she hung her arm out the window in the warm darkness, she heard the loud rumble of a motorcycle racing up the road behind her. She adjusted the rearview mirror and saw a motorcycle, pretty similar to the motorcycle that Raph had shut up in the back of the semi-truck. The motorcycle pulled abruptly to a stop a few inches from the bumper of Grandpa's Ghost and the driver revved impatiently, waiting for a green light.

A fit young man in a battered red helmet drove the motorcycle and just as her eyes flicked to the light to check for green, the motorcycle cut around her car with only a few inches of clearance and then stopped right on the yellow line of the abandoned country road.

Cherry thumped her fingers angrily on the damp metal of the car door as she recognized the hard round back and strong limbs of Leonardo, riding his brother's motorcycle. She shouted out the window over their engines, both rumbling in tandem, "It's past your bedtime, Leo!"

"My hostage ran off!" he shouted through his helmet and over the sound of the engines. "I told you to stay there! What part of…"

The light turned green and Cherry stepped on the accelerator as hard as she could, leaving Leonardo lecturing back at the intersection. She laughed and turned up the radio racing into the starry night, leaving the determined ninja in the exhaust of her Chevelle. But as soon as she considered slowing down, she heard familiar rumbling on the rushing night air and looked back in her side view mirror, spotting Leonardo on the motorcycle following her like a buzzing insect bent on a lecture.

Cherry gripped the leather steering wheel cover with sweaty palms and stepped on the accelerator again and watched the odometer creep past 100 miles per hour. She slammed on the break as she thundered into a curve and thanked her hometown advantage in this race. Cherry knew every bend and pothole better than she knew anyone in the city. She sped up again as soon as she rounded the corner, the guardrail covered in wild grapevine and the yellow curve sign covered in bullet holes flashing past. She chanced a brief look back at the motorcycle and watched as it gracefully took the curve, the driver going so low to the pavement that he actually allowed his gloved hand to skim the pavement.

Did he do that on purpose to show off?

The Baker orchards flashed by on either side of the road and apple crates lined the ditch like grey wooden forts. The road peaked in steep hills over and over and she let Grandpa's Ghost reach the top of the hill, wheels leaving the ground momentarily as it soared back to the pavement, swelling with adrenaline as the car lurched and metal groaned.

Cherry didn't need to look in her mirrors to know that Leonardo was right behind her. The sound of his engine purred like a content lion.

Finally, Cherry turned a sharp right, the car veering with momentum onto the dusty shoulder, throwing up a cloud as the car fishtailed in the road. Cherry chanted, "Shit shit shit shit," as she turned the steering wheel as quickly as possible. The engine stalled and she pumped the clutch rapidly. The ninja could not win.

The motorcycle took advantage of her wide turn and cut her off on the shoulder. As Leonardo slowed down long enough to yell into the Chevelle and Cherry wrestled the beast's heavy weight under control, "What's the matter? Getting tired?" He slithered around the stalling Chevelle and headed down the road towards the twelve or so lights that represented the nearby town.

Cherry turned the key off and flicked it on again, mumbling to herself, "Alien bastard…" The engine coughed as it reignited and she spun rubber on the pavement again and then desperately raced over the pot-hole filled road, eyes on the lone motorcycle ahead.

But she slowed down suddenly when she reached a familiar faded street sign announcing the City Limits of town. Small houses clumped closer and closer together every feet. The motorcycle turned into a dark patch of trees and she saw its headlights go dark. Cherry coasted down a hill and pulled into the trees after him. Leonardo put down the kickstand on the motorcycle and pried off the helmet, still sitting on the back of the motorcycle.

Cherry turned off Grandpa's Ghost and the quiet of the night filled her ears, crickets chirping and frogs croaking in the nearby lime pond. "So what's the matter, officer?" she asked, strutting to the motorcycle and leaning against the front end like a magazine model. "I was just trying to get away from this creep that won't stop stalking me. He likes to jump out at me while I'm on the john."

He nearly smirked, but descended from the motorcycle, peeling off the driving gloves and shut them in the case on the back. "I couldn't sleep because my brother and other hostage both snore. I thought I would go for a peaceful night drive at over 100 miles per hour. I think I should say that you need to be more careful driving that thing so fast at night. You can't have very good visibility. What if a car had been on the shoulder or a deer ran out in front of you?"

"Then a speeding alien would have rear ended me because he was going even faster. Don't give me your 'bitch, please' eye roll either." She rubbed her sore sweaty hands on her jeans. "So do they teach you to drive like that on your home world?"

Leonardo leaned his head back slightly and rolled his eyes, sighing at the same time as if the world were about to crash around his ears.

"Don't do exactly what you just did," she said. "We're in town. We should have some fun."

Leonardo nervously glanced down the road towards the sound of cars driving slowly through town. "I don't know, my… mother ship doesn't allow me to be seen in public. There isn't much I can do out here, exactly." He cocked his head as he listened to the eerie bark of a distant animal.

After several minutes of teasing and coercion, Cherry finally convinced Leonardo to get in the Chevelle and leave the motorcycle hidden in the trees so that they could find something to do. "It's dark. Nobody will notice. Just keep your window rolled up or something. You can wear your helmet if you think it will help."

Leonardo got into the passenger's seat of Grandpa's Ghost very carefully as if the floorboards might fall out from underneath him. He shut the heavy door silently and Cherry said, "I'm impressed that you did that so quietly." Cherry jumped into the driver's seat and slammed the door and listened to it echo through the woods. Leonardo flinched.

"We should chill out by the river. You know, relax and talk about the impending end of the universe. The usual stuff in a small town on Friday night." She followed the main street, lined with old businesses recently converted into insurance offices and antique stores. The road curved over the railroad tracks and Leonardo gripped the top of the window, as the car bounced on its bad shocks.

"I need to kill Hal Barton…" Leonardo said darkly as he looked out the passenger window into the distant tress.

Cherry parked near the children's playground and noticed that all the old metal swing sets that she'd played on as a child had been replaced with blue and yellow plastic. "Want to push me on the swing?" she asked him.

"As long as nobody sees me," he said.

Cherry sat down in one of the swings and let it twist her weight left and right, waiting for a push. Finally, she felt two masculine hands push on her back with enough force to send her into flight. "Hey, easy cowboy!" she said as she swung her legs. "So I hear some guys over there. I think I'm going to go to say hello. I have an idea…"

Leonardo stopped pushing and stepped around the swings, stopping to shout, "I can't be seen, remember? Go hang out with those people if you like. I'm staying here! Why did you bring me over here if you're just going to go party with some losers you don't even know! Now I have to stay hidden to make sure nothing happens to you! You just as irresponsible as…"

"Oh, shut up!" she said, digging her heels into the dirt. She left him standing in front of the swings and headed towards the direction of the voices.

* * *

After fifteen minutes Cherry knocked on the passenger window of Grandpa's Ghost. Leonardo looked straight into her face, obviously aware of her presence already. He rolled down the window and said, "Did you have a nice visit?"

She held up a bottle of fire whiskey and said, "Yeah, I made some friends and they gave me a present. Get out. Let's go sit somewhere."

They sat on the bank of the river on muddy tree roots, their feet in the cold water as it rippled past and listened to teenagers laughing further down the bank. A girl giggled wildly in flirty feigned protest.

"You do realize that somebody needs to drive back right? I mean, I can't leave the motorcycle here. I have to get it back somehow. Maybe it would fit in the trunk of the car though…" Leonardo said, looking thoughtfully into the night sky as if the answer were written in the blue patchy clouds.

"Maybe. It's hilarious how much free stuff you can get if you pretend you like a guy," Cherry said, unscrewing the bottle and smelling the bitter sweetness inside. "So I was thinking, you know a lot about me. I don't know anything about you."

"Yes, and…?" Leonardo asked, leaning back on his hands, away from the potential of probing questions.

She said, "We need to play a trust game. Have you ever played Never Have I Ever? Like you ask each other questions and if the other person has done something they take a shot?"

Leonardo rolled his eyes. Bitch, please. "I live with my three idiot brothers. There isn't much to discover. What do you mean, if you pretend to like guys? Did you do some… pretending to get a hold of that?"

Cherry smiled brightly and put a hand on his arm, "It isn't hard or anything. They practically want you to have it."

He angrily brushed her hand away and said, "I don't need a display of your skills. Ask me a question."

She spun the plastic cap around and around on the bottle. "Well, if you admit that you're an alien then we'll just call it a night. How much of me did you see when we meditated?"

"I have been all the way inside you," he said deeply and pulled a wet twig out of the water between his toes and flung it further into the stream of the river.

She laughed and said, "Not even Eric can make that claim about me. Okay, do you live on a spaceship?"

"No." Leonardo crossed his arms and smirked as he thought. "Have you ever been on the Dean's List at your college?"

Cherry scoffed and put the bottle to her mouth, taking a small drink. The sweetness burned her throat. "You know, I remember this stuff being a lot better when I was sixteen. Probably because I wasn't supposed to have it. Okay. Have you ever been on a spaceship?"

Leonardo glared and reached for the bottle. He took a small swig and said, "I didn't live there though."

Cherry smiled a cheesy smile of triumph.

Leonardo said, "Do you want me to throw you in the river?" He thought for a second and asked, "Okay, have you ever had a traffic ticket?"

Cherry grabbed the bottle and took another drink. "I've had enough to decoupage my dorm room."

"I could tell by your driving tonight." He leaned casually to his side against a tree, pulling his feet out of the water.

She said, "Have you ever lived anywhere but planet earth?"

"No." Leonardo yawned and pulled up a few blades of grass in his fingers.

"Ugh!" Cherry pounded the ground in frustration.

They asked questions back and forth for ten minutes. Leonardo was forced to take a drink when he admitted that he had parents, he supposed, somewhere in the world, but he'd never met them and so he couldn't honestly answer that they weren't aliens. He was adopted and could say with certainty that his adopted father was not an alien. Cherry had taken so many drinks that she'd single-handedly emptied more than half the bottle.

"Well, now you know that I skipped school, I drove the tractor, I've only kissed three guys, I buy my panties from that online place where it's all cheap surplus… I got in a cat fight at the club once!" she randomly blurted. It somehow seemed very important that he know.

"A cat fight?" Leonardo was smiling too much.

She wobbled to her feet and the river bank tilted on the horizon. "Yeah, Melanie said I took her tip bag and I said, 'Bitch! Get out of my thong! That's where I had my cash. She put her hand in there to grab my money and I pushed her and she fell over. It's like naked high school!" She waved her hands wildly, trying to wordlessly pantomime the social injustice of the moment while simultaneously batting away mosquitoes. "Like they all bitch and complain about the same shit like boys and stuff only you're all naked and there's money involved."

"That sounds like a good show," he said, lazily. "Normally, I'd pretend to be outraged. Thank you, fire whiskey." He held up the bottle and spoke to it as if he were an actor in a Shakespearean play speaking to the skull of a long dead friend.

Cherry tried to do some sexy dance moves and tripped on a clump of grass. "You need to loosen up, precious."

"If I relax, then my brothers all die of incompetence," he said, standing up. "Show me your fight moves. Come on. Give me a demonstration. I want to improve your technique. Pretend that I'm you and my belt is a thong."

Cherry laughed hysterically, bending over double.

"Come on! You be that Mel… Min… be that bitch that grabbed your thong and I'll be you." Leonardo assumed a tactical defense position, looking very intense and professional. "Now pose me like I'm you. And then you show me what she did. I'll show you what you should have done and then when naked women attack you in the future, then you can do it better next time. I like to help people! Especially naked women."

Cherry tried to remember Melanie and her cloudy mind conjured a tall brunette, bobbing her head, arguing and pointing at Cherry's thong. She tried to cast a spell of bitchy attitude at Leonardo and she said, "Cherry, get your skinny ass back here and give me back my money ho! I know you put it up your ass where you keep all the… um… she said like I take it in the ass for twenty bucks or something…"

Leonardo made a disgusted face and said, "You know, if you really want to be realistic for this, you should be naked too. I'm naked! It's fair that way!"

"We're in public," she said as she instantly peeled off her shirt and unbuttons her jeans. "If we get arrested, I'm going to make you bend over for the soap and you'll like it!" She tossed her jeans at him and he batted them aside.

"I think I'm more drunker than I thought," he said, smiling widely. "Okay, Mela… Wendy… Come at me, bitch!"

Cherry put her hands on her hips and abruptly rushed at him, trying to scratch and hit him, but he grabbed both of her hands and said, "You should have done this!" He lifted her over his head and the world swirled around in a blurry mess. She felt his hand smack her backside lightly. "That's how you win this fight!" Then he swung her around in a circle, finally setting her on her feet.

Cherry stumbled sideways and he reached out to steady her, still smiling. "See," he said. "That's how you win that fight. Wow, I'm being so fucking loud! What's wrong with me! Sensei would be ashamed!"

"Who cares!" Cherry yelled, picking up her clothes from the dew covered grass. "The world is ending remember? Yell as much as you want! Are you an alien?"

"I'm not…" He took an unsteady step backwards and said, "Hey, I'm not drunk enough for that! All I'll say is that I'm a native of New York."

She put on her clothes and said, "You know, I think you should have to live with udderly… terrible… scaring… utter… utter… consequenshes because you won't tell me," she said, fumbling to find the button hole on her jeans.

Leonardo's hands pulled her forward by the band of her jeans and said, "Can't you figure out something this simple, Miss Genius?" He fastened her pants for her and then did some acrobatics in the grass, running and tumbling like a gymnast.

"Wow, the car is a long ways away," Cherry said, as he took a few steps from the bank and watched the ground, the grass drifting about like a green cloud.

"Hey, can I see your phone. I want to check how much money I still have in my account." He held out his hand and gestured with his fingers.

Cherry said, "Well, you'll have to find it. Work for it." She did a few sexy moves with her hips and shimmied away from him.

Leonardo stepped up to her and everything went black and hot as he pulled her t-shirt up over her head and then she felt a few hot fingers reach into her sweaty cleavage, fishing out her phone. He yanked her shirt down and she breathed in a gust of air and found him smirking and unlocking her phone.

"I am… going to get your name tattooed on my fucking ass if you don't say you're an alien!" Cherry leaned on the front end of the car as her senses failed momentarily. She wondered how she'd gotten so far so fast. "Did I just teleport?" she asked. She patted her chest and yelled, "Fuck! What happened to my phone! It must be in the river!"

Leonardo followed her, looking about himself warily. "Wow, I can see! It's a miracle. You know, that whiskey is already wearing off. Maybe it wasn't any good. What do you mean, get my named tattooed. It's your… prime real estate… Do whatever you like with it."

Cherry stomped off towards town, heading towards the tattoo parlor. "You have to come stop me!"

Leonardo climbed into the car and after a few minutes she heard it start up and headlights lit up the dark playground. She could hear the car rolling behind her on the gravel at about 2 miles per hour. She ran to the open window and yelled back at Leonardo, who was leaning on the window at her, "You can't drive! You've been drinking!"

"I hardly had anything! And I'm fine now." He let the car idle and said, "Sorry… but if you want to get my name tattooed on your body, I can say that I am flattered and so are my possibly alien ancestors." He smirked and rolled up the window.

Cherry stomped through the grass and walked down the side of the road, pursued at a snail's pace by the ninja driving Grandpa's Ghost. "Are you an alien?!" she shouted in vain at the car creeping protectively behind her.

Finally, she jumped over the cracked curb and onto the main street. Leonardo parked the car near the fire hydrant, but he didn't get out to stop her as she opened the door of Mos Eisley Tattoo Parlor.

* * *

An hour later, with a head full of the murk of alcohol, Cherry left the tattoo parlor, a hand on her left butt cheek, rubbing the sore skin.

Leonardo opened the passenger door and she climbed in, shouting out incoherent vulgarity as she put weight onto it. "My ancestors, wherever they are from, are pleased, Evelyn," he said as he reached across her body to pull out her seat belt, buckling her in like a child. She took the opportunity to smell him again. Herbs and aftershave and river water.

"Hey, I've been planning to get the name Leonardo on my ass for years, okay. It just happens to be your name too. I'm a big Dan Brown fan," she said.

He pulled the car into the now abandoned main road.

Cherry said, "I hope this doesn't affect my tips since I have another guy's name on my ass. Might break the illusion."

"What illusion?" Leonardo steered with one hand, the other on his kneecap, reaching over to shift occasionally.

"The illusion that we're these sexy nymphos who are there only for them. And that they really lucked out because they found this super hot chick that just happens to be into them because they're such a stud. It never occurs to them that it's our job and we're paid to be there like how a waitress must just hang around refilling your coffee for the fun of it, you know. Fucking men." She rolled down the window and let her hair swirl in her face. "Whatever. They're the ones stupid enough to fall for it and pay too."

They drove in silence and stopped briefly to strap the motorcycle awkwardly into the trunk. It barely fit and Leonardo only made 40 miles per hour the whole trip home. She watched him drive, stern and absorbed by the road, mind probably full of the professional tasks at hand tomorrow. Kill serial killer, torture the hostage, get vital information from his primary hostage…

After half an hour of silence, he said, "Well, how would you know anything is real then?" He hesitated for a second. "I mean, how are they supposed to know if it's real or not if you're actively leading them on?"

Cherry shrugged. "Not my problem."

He stepped on the gas and sped up a little. The motorcycle thumped dangerously in the back.

* * *

The sun came up pink and orange over the trees as he pulled Grandpa's Ghost into the driveway. He pulled the motorcycle out of the trunk and carried it in his arms to the back of the semi-truck, putting it back where he'd found it.

Cherry stumbled slowly up to bed, her mouth dry and head spinning and sore. All the fun had drained away and left nothing but the poison behind.

She felt Leonardo's hand on her back as she stumbled on a step. "Watch it," he said, all of the playfulness now gone. He helped her to her bedroom door and then whispered, "I'll be busy helping my brother tomorrow. I want you to stay here and spend your time figuring out the information that I need. I'm tired of being led in circles. I know what's in your head. I know she follows you around. That red eyed thing." His voice sounded sharp and angry. "This ends now. Okay? This is too important. And I'm sorry if I'm rude, but I don't have time for these games. Good night."

He watched her for a second, eyes flickering with doubt. Then he silently crossed to the end of the hall and opened the guest room door. The snores of a captive and his captor roared in harmony from inside as Leonardo closed the door behind him.

In the morning, Cherry awoke to the sounds of her mother and Raph standing in the hallway demanding that Leonardo immediately wake up and find out who siphoned all the gasoline out of both the motorcycle and Grandpa's Ghost. Leonardo said that he didn't think the culprits were too far away, but he didn't have time to deal with that and without any more comment, he escorted his brother and the hostage, still in his white lab coat, groveling and begging the two monsters for mercy, out to the barn for an interrogation.

Cherry pulled out a pen and paper and tried to remember.


	8. Sakura

_So I was just brutally attacked by the largest spider I've ever seen and called my mother to come kill it for me. And we found two. And, yes, I am an adult in my own house._

_Believe it or not, I've been working on this one chapter since the last time I posted._

_Aster Sapphire called Leo "gender-bent Snow White" recently and I think it stuck with me because I keep wanting to write small animals flocking to him for some reason._

Cherry spent the morning in the kitchen with her mother watching the precious invalid sweating in the noon sun as he chopped enough wood to keep a whole family burning a never-ending fire for five winters. "You shouldn't make him work so hard when he's still recovering," Cherry admonished as she watched his muscles straining, while not actively attempting to put a stop to the exploitation.

Diane attempted to bait Cherry into blushing over the manly alien working hard in the barnyard with several lurid comments about his physique and possible sexual prowess and eventually Cherry escaped her taunts by heading out the screen door with a glass of lemonade for Leonardo.

Cherry snickered at Leonardo's neat pile of cleanly chopped wood, each log symmetrically stacked. He rested the ax over his shoulder and watched her, as if she might throw the glass of lemonade at him. "I'm sorry if the wood is uneven. I tried my best." He glanced over his shoulder self-consciously at the beautifully stacked wood.

Cherry handed him the glass of lemonade and said, "You're a lot better than the last guy we hired. Mom hired this guy with really nicely defined biceps so she could stand at the window and watch him cutting wood. Sometimes she'd ask him to cut wood when she didn't even need it. But he was too naïve to realize it and made this huge pyramid for her. You know, sweating and manly and stuff. And it lasted the whole winter." She bit her lip to hide the smile.

Leonardo thanked her and took a dainty sip of the lemonade. "That's good that the wood lasted so long. It's very warm out here. I'm not sweating because I'm tired." He wrinkled up his face with pride. "I'm just hot. So thank you for the lemonade."

"Yeah, I thought you must be exhausted, since you're not even breathing hard." Cherry sat down on a log. A thundering yell erupted from the barn, frightening away a flock of seagulls in the barnyard. A voice pled for mercy in response. Cherry leaned on the damp wood pile, hoping to cast a mist of sex appeal at Leonardo. A spider crawled on her hand and she brushed off the spider and soggy bark on her pants. "I thought you were going to help your brother with the hostage."

Leonardo pulled out more wood and placed it on the chopping block. "I was going to help, but he wanted some time to loosen him up first. Raph is frightening enough on his own to most people. So I decided to help your mother since he didn't need me." He brought down the ax and cut the log cleanly in two. "I thought I should do as much heavy lifting as I can before I have to leave. I imagine it's difficult with just you two girls around."

Cherry said, "Well, for your information, Mr. Muscle-Tone, I am in great shape! I have a very physical job!" She spoke with her nose in the air, full of dignity, until a fly flew up a nostril and she spent a second batting at the air and blowing her nose. "I used to do all the wood chopping until I left for college. Give me the ax! I'll show you!"

He held the ax out to her and sat down drinking his lemonade. "I'm sorry to have offended you. Please demonstrate your wood-cutting skills."

Cherry had never cut a block of wood in her life. But she did P90X every other night, so how hard could it be? She raised the ax in the air and brought it down as hard as she could at least ten times. Wood chips flew in the air and hit her face. "See! I… Let me try again!" Cherry attacked the block of wood again, but only managed to flake off the bark.

"You have to let gravity do some of the work," Leonardo said as he put the lemonade down on a log and then came up behind her, putting his arms around her waist and his hands on the ax to guide her. "You don't need to raise it that high. Here…" He choked up his grip on the ax and demonstrated the perfect swing, cleanly cutting the block of wood. His weight forced her forward as he leaned down and he took a little hopping step backwards as his chest leaned into her sweaty back.

"Is chopping wood an essential subsistence activity for the males of your alien tribe?" she asked, as she felt his hands gripping hers, possibly preparing for more demonstrative swings. "Do they moisturize a lot on your planet? Your hands are softer than mine!"

Leonardo immediately let go of her hands and walked away, taking the ax with him. Within fifteen seconds he had chopped six more blocks of wood.

Cherry rubbed the tattoo still stinging her backside. "You totally want to ask to check my spelling, don't you?"

"Why? Did you spell Leonardo with an I?" he asked, slicing another piece of wood and tossing it onto the wood pile aggressively. He flinched and then straightened it into symmetry.

She smirked as she gratuitously craned her neck to watch him bend down for another log and said, "So, I have this friend and I think he's an alien. I mean, he won't tell me one way or the other."

He put the log on the chopping block, but turned to listen to her story, leaning against the ax as if it were a cane. "Yeah, I can see how that might be really annoying."

"Well, my friend has this hard exoskeleton and I've been wondering if I should ask him if he has trouble getting into sexual positions. What would you do? Would you ask him?"

Leonardo glanced at a distressed cry coming from the barn. He said, "I'd think he wouldn't know if he could get into those positions until he tried them. When he tries, and has success or failure, I'm sure he'll let you know first. If he knows you very well, then he must know how nosy you are, asking really personal questions like that."

"He should demonstrate! For documentation reasons. So that humanity can learn more about his people's sexual practices." She took a drink of his lemonade and wondered if she had just accidentally propositioned him for sex.

He grimaced and said, "You mean, like demonstrate on a dummy or something? The current sexual practices of my tribe are… very independent activities…" he muttered, as he turned back to the log on his wood-pile. "Why do we always end up talking about sex?"

"I don't know!" said another male voice, coming from the barn. "I have no idea why you keep talking about sex with your hostage." Raph stood in the open doorway of the barn, wiping blood off his hands and onto a dirty rag that her father used to check the oil levels on the tractor. "I spend more time talking about how they're in so much pain because I won't stop hitting my hostage. Get in here, Leo! I need some good-cop."

Leonardo propped the ax next to the wood pile and went into the barn, looking resolutely ahead and without acknowledging Cherry.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Cherry sat in the passenger seat of the van, watching Leonardo tensely grip the steering while, driving as fast as the law allowed. She said, "You're a better citizen than people who really live on this planet."

"I don't want to get pulled over." Then they drove in silence for twenty more minutes.

She watched the surrounding countryside fly past in a void of brilliant green and finally asked, "So where are we going now? I assume that the scientist gave you bad news? What did he say? I demand to know, since I'm the person with the power to destroy the world and all. I think you should be answering to me and not the other way around."

He clenched his teeth and then hesitated, before saying, "The bomb isn't quite what we thought and it's too dangerous for you to be near it. Raph will take the scientist and the bomb back towards the city. Mikey is on the road headed towards Hal Barton's trailer…"

"Is that one of your brothers? Is that even safe?" Cherry gripped the door handle, her anxiety levels rising with his every tense word.

Leonardo rolled through a stop a sign and headed towards a nearby town that used to beat Cherry's high school in basketball every year. "I need someone to make sure that he isn't out there slicing up unsuspecting civilians and to also ensure that he isn't following the bomb. Or whatever it really is. Now we don't even really know. Don is still working on the bigger issue and trying to solve this problem that you made…"

"I didn't start this! You're making it sound like it's my fault!" She pointed at herself dramatically, to demonstrate her innocence.

He hit the gas pedal aggressively and she was thrown back into her seat as he glided into the left lane and passed a semi-truck. He yelled, "Don't lie to me and don't play me! I've been inside your head and seen every thought inside you! You know exactly what this thing is! You know on some level, at least! And you talk to it and let it…"

"I don't know what you think you saw, but I didn't do this on purpose! I didn't grow up at Hogwarts or something!" She crossed her arms and then rolled down the window to purge the suffocating humidity. Sweat rolled down her sides and she reached under her shirt with one hand to tug at her chafing underwire. "Don't blame me because your brother can't figure this out and I did!"

"I'm not…" Leonardo thought for a second and then said, "Okay, I am blaming you! I am totally blaming you because I've spent the last week with you and you have been totally unhelpful to me! All you do is flirt and try to confuse me…!"

She laughed out loud and said, "You're really full up to your eyeballs with ego, aren't you?! It isn't my fault if you're so naïve that you can't handle talking to a girl and I have NOT been leading you on…" She pointed at him for emphasis. "I was kidnapped remember? You literally threw me over your shoulder and carried me away! I have been really helpful and pleasant, in spite of the fact that I was manhandled by an alien who killed somebody right in front of me!"

Leonardo pulled suddenly onto the side of the road, dust flying behind the van as he dramatically turned off the van and stared at her intensely before speaking again. "I am trying to single-handedly save the ENTIRE WORLD! I am sorry if I inconvenienced you! But by this point, after I was nearly killed by a person who you incompetently let get his hands on the information that you KNEW I WAS DESPARATELY LOOKING FOR…" His voice rose loudly as he continued. "…AND LEFT LYING AROUND WHERE ANYBODY COULD FIND IT! AND HE NEARLY KILLED ME BECAUSE OF IT! AND YOU TELL ME THAT YOU CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO REMEMBER! WHEN I'VE SEEN EVERYTHING INSIDE YOU AND I KNOW THAT THIS THING TALKS TO YOU! YOU COULD JUST ASK IT! BUT THAT WOULD BE TOO RUDE! I'M SORRY IF I'M ON EDGE! I'M TIRED OF EVERYBODY BEING TOTALLY UNHELPFUL! JUST TELL ME WHAT I NEED TO KNOW AND I'LL LEAVE YOU AT YOUR MOTHER'S HOUSE AND YOU WON'T EVER HAVE TO SEE ME AGAIN! AND YOU CAN GET BACK TO WORK MAKING MEN FEEL STUPID AND BEING PAID FOR IT!" He huffed and turned the key in the ignition, hurrying back into traffic.

Cherry stared out the window, eyes burning with tears. She pretended to scratch her face to brush them off her cheeks and then rubbed them with her sleeve, now pretending to wipe away dripping sweat. She breathed through her mouth to conceal the mucus in her nose.

After a while, he pulled into a gas station and climbed over the side of his seat and into the back, searching for something. She stared steadily out the window, consciously averting her face to him as he moved behind her. The van tossed with his motion and she looked in the rearview mirror and saw him putting on a baggy hoodie over shapeless overalls, gloves, a black ski mask and pulled the hood over his head. Finally he yanked on a pair of old steel toed boots and then jumped out of the back. He crossed the parking lot and Cherry wondered if he would either faint from the heat or get arrested for presumed attempted burglary.

He came back a few minutes later with a small grocery bag and climbed into the back of the van again, then put down the bag and tore off all the heavy winter clothes. His face was a ruddy brown and he was so sweaty that she could smell him in the front seat. He climbed back into the driver seat and handed her a small packet of tissues and a bottle of water. "I'm used to people just punching me when I talk too much. I'm sorry," he said. "Even though I am under stress, it is still no reason for such inexcusable rudeness. So please forgive me and upon my honor I will strive to do better." He gave her a formal half-bow in the driver's seat. "If I ever am that angry again, you have full permission to take your leave of me and I won't attempt to stop you."

She watched him with swollen eyes and nodded, wondering if he was being insincere or if his mother ship had dropped him off in the wrong time period.

Then he tapped his hands on the steering wheels as if thinking uncertainly about something. He turned the key in the ignition and then turned it off again.

"What's wrong? Is the van out of gas?" Cherry blew her nose on one of the tissues and wiped her cheeks with her bare arm.

"Um… I… Well, never mind." Leonardo turned the key in the ignition and then turned it off again. He found the grocery bag abandoned between the two front seats and fished in the bottom, pulling out his closed fist.

Cherry leaned back in her seat. Would Leonardo punch her for pissing him off? Maybe he was really a psycho. You never really know a guy until you're dancing naked in his lap, after all. Maybe you don't really know an alien until you cry in front of him.

"I bought you a present that was unrelated to your… um… psychological and physical well-fare. I know that is really unprofessional of me as a kidnapper, but I saw it and it made me think of you. Which is probably really stupid because Cherry isn't even your real name." He opened his fist and offered her a small keychain with two glittery red cherries dangling from a stem attached to the chain. "I didn't go in there looking for something that reminded me of you!" he said urgently, as if he were being court-martialed. "I was looking at the tissues and saw a keychain shaped like cherries…" The heat flush in his cheeks darkened into a splotchy maroon as his blood pressure increased dramatically by the minute. "I couldn't help but be reminded of your name. But that isn't even accurate! That's your stripper name, so it's probably really stupid. And it's obvious too. I knew I shouldn't have gotten this thing. Where's the receipt? I'll take it back." Leonardo grabbed the receipt as it wafted across the van floor. "It just seemed rude to make a nice girl cry and then only buy water and tissues. I mean, not that I looked specifically for something. It just came up on me!"

"How did you spend all those days in the club watching us dance?" Cherry asked, smiling at the flustered ninja. "You're the cutest thing in the world! Don't take it back. It was perfect. And stop acting so stupid. You did fine. It is perfectly acceptable to buy your hostage a present after you make them cry. Especially when she has Stockholm Syndrome!" Cherry held out her hand for the keychain, demanding her gift.

He reluctantly dropped it into her palm and then turned on the van, brushing the sweat off his face. "I'm sorry. I only know one other woman and it's my sister. Truthfully, I never even met a woman until I was fifteen. That was… um… six months ago… But I'm getting better at it, I think! I can talk to Karai pleasantly now when she isn't stabbing me."

"Stabbing you? Some bitch stabs you?" Cherry pulled out her phone and Googled the name 'Karai' in the New York City directory.

Leonardo pulled onto the highway again. He rubbed the top of his sweaty head and said reluctantly, "The scientist told us an interesting story while Raph pummeled him and I assured him that I wouldn't let scary Raph hurt him anymore."

Cherry thought he wanted her to interject a statement of curiosity, so she pulled out a notebook and flipped to her last class notes about Australopithecine skeletal remains.

When he received no eager entreaties for explanation, he said, "The scientist said that he knows of a Priest of Chaos. He has some kind of ability to communicate with it or her or whatever this thing is. It's how he gets his orders. He said that this Priest divines instruction indirectly and then sends him emails. He even drew me a map to the location and it's not far from here. Now normally, I would never ask someone who is unskilled in combat to accompany me on a recognizance mission that is most likely dangerous. We don't have any clue what or who this Priest is. But I thought that since you're kind of Chaos' vessel, you might be able to feel things out for me. And I promise that I will protect you with my life. Does that sound okay? If not, I'll turn right around and leave you with your mother and Raph." Leonardo glanced sidelong at her as he drove.

Go back and sit with her mother and watch her ask Raph to push the tractor around the yard so she could watch his muscles flex? She'd rather watch Leonardo drive than his brother do much of anything. "I'll keep out of trouble. I could probably just nuke the building if I get in trouble." Cherry imitated a bomb exploding and then held her tongue out at an angle to denote instantaneous death, just in case he hadn't gotten the point.

"That isn't funny! Your imminent death is not funny at all!" Leonardo gripped the steering wheel. "Well, we're headed in that direction. This person had better be helpful to me, if he knows what's good for him."

Cherry watched his knuckles knead into the steering wheel leather and his jaw work with tension. Elegant, but deadly. "Go wherever you need to go," she said.

Leonardo cleared his throat and said, "Who knows. Maybe when we've finally gotten rid of this Chaos thing, you could write about it for your classes. My brother always says that everything is a learning opportunity; even when surrounded by idiots. Sometimes I think he means us, but I'm sure he's really talking about our enemies. I'm glad that you're such a good student. It's a very attractive quality."

"I don't know if being the harbinger of the apocalypse will count for extra credit. So you're one of those sexy school girl types right?" she asked blandly. Karai Oroku had something to do with Oroku Tower and lived in a penthouse. She loaded a picture of a sleek young woman in a black dress at a charity function. Karai had clearly never seen a moment of joy in her life. Cherry looked down at her muddy sneakers, tight worn jeans and WILL DIG FOR BEER t-shirt and felt terribly underdressed. This classy woman stabbed Leonardo on a regular basis? Cherry wondered with horror if she had ever been hired to strip for Karai at a party.

"What do you mean? Do I like dressing women up like school girls?" Leonardo distractedly searched the side of the highway for the appropriate exit and then patiently slowed down to forty miles per hour to allow an old lady in a rusty Cadillac to slowly merge in front of him. "Are you insinuating that I'm a pedophile?"

"No! I don't mean that you like really little school girls!" Cherry turned off her phone and frustratedly threw it in her backpack, now annoyed with this Karai Oroku for being richer and better looking. But maybe she had an advantage because she didn't stab him regularly. "I mean, what kind of stuff gets you off? Every night at the club, some weird guy comes in and asks for special time in the V.I.P. Room…"

"What is that? You mean, those closets with the couches and the wine buckets in the back of your club? I hid inside one to wait for you and heard very nasty sounds in the next cubicle." Leonardo shook off the memory and sat up straighter as he drove.

Cherry turned on the radio and wondered if he was the sort of person that listened to NPR while he drove. A British journalist said, "A detailed reading of the Vagina Monologues gives the listener a deeper appreciation of the intimate relationship between a woman and…"

"Can you change that please?" Leonardo said in a forced placid tone, as if he wanted scream, but wouldn't allow himself the release.

She fumbled for a station and finally found electronic mariachi music. She said, "Well, anyway, every night a guy asks for the V.I.P. Room and then while you're giving him a dance, he says he'll pay extra if you do something like fart on him or let him lick your toes. Once I had a guy ask if he could take off his pants so I could see the baby diaper he was wearing underneath. Oh, a guy wanted to vomit on him last week!"

Cherry said, "Aw!" when she noticed the violently repulsed face Leonardo made.

"What? I'm not cute!" He sighed dramatically and said, "Well, I hope you get paid well for allowing men to treat you in such a demeaning way. Are they regulars? I mean… do you know what kind of cars they drive or their names? Maybe the days they came in?"

"You want to track them? You're not going to kill guys because they want me to fart on them, are you?!" she asked with amused shock.

Leonardo turned down the electro-mariachi band and said, "No! I'm not going to kill them! I mean, they sound potentially dangerous! I could find a way to keep them from coming back. It doesn't sound like the bouncers do their jobs very well there."

Cherry crossed her arms and looked out the window to avoid the indignation. "Well, they don't look for guys like that. They throw out the ones who are trying to stick things in your… orifices whenever they get a chance."

Leonardo didn't speak for a minute and then said, "I didn't see any of this in your… when I was in there with you. I didn't see you farting on anybody. It looked like a big blur."

"Like I want Precious to watch guys fingering me when the bouncers have their backs turned and don't see it in time? I don't take money for shit like that. I mean, at first it's something really harmless. Like guys who want you to call them Daddy and tell you that you're a dirty whore and think you're getting off on it. Or they want you to suck them there in the V.I.P. Room…"

"Wait, what?" Leonardo asked, as if confused. "I thought they had rules in these places."

Cherry threw her hands up dramatically, impatiently wishing she could take the topic back and introduce something harmless like his favorite pie filling. "They do! Ugh! It's just that you start calling a guy Daddy for twenty bucks and then you're letting him cop a feel for a few more and then it just goes downhill from there. You have to keep your wits about you all the time and just know how to handle people and say it's not your thing and that it isn't allowed or just laugh and brush their hand away."

"You should apply at McDonald's," Leonardo said quietly. "Well, in the future, if you ever are harassed again, you can call me and I guarantee that they will never do it again."

She said, "Will they do much of anything ever again?"

Leonardo responded with a comment on the lovely tulip beds in the highway median and said that tax-payer money should be spent on beautifying the world instead of on prisons. "They should spend it on positive things and then the hopeless will have positive things to do. Just like in the depression when they made all the unemployed farmers plant trees and build bridges and things like that. Or state sponsored tai chi lessons and puppies for homeless people. I don't know. Nice things."

Cherry asked where they should put the prisoners if they spent all the prison money on tulips. He turned up the music and didn't answer.

"That's a nice thought about the puppies. Where will these puppies live if they give them to homeless people?" She imagined a Leonardoan utopia filled with homeless people with puppies, tulips everywhere and no crime because everybody took tai chi lessons, drank green tea and meditated.

"Well, I didn't say it was a perfect idea. Okay, shut up!" he said, laughing. "I'm a leader of four. If I had to have a broader vision, I would work on it. State sponsored puppies and tulip beds would work in my tiny kingdom."

Cherry thought his kingdom sounded like a nice place to live. They passed a billboard with the black silhouette of a woman and the words GIRLS XXX, NEXT THREE EXITS, TOPLESS ENTERTAINMENT, COME SEE US! FREE ADMISSION.

* * *

As the cornfields and forests drifted past, Cherry tried to remember why she knew this road so well. She hadn't gone down this road on her bus route in elementary school. She didn't remember heading to any nearby town by this road. But they weren't on a highway any longer. Cherry hadn't remembered Leonardo turning off onto a dirt road, but then the clock read 7:59p.m. and she last remembered it reading 4:21p.m. Hadn't she read the clock with boredom during the last song? A song couldn't last more than five minutes. But then these electro-mariachi songs all sounded the same so maybe fifty songs played in the interim and she hadn't noticed.

The endless cave of overarching trees cleared into an empty field with a single old church in the center. No parking lot or other sign of access and no driveway led to the door. The old wood grayed with age and gaps from missing planks speckled the exterior. A dull wind blew along the heavy tops of the grass. No graves marked the yard around the church. No sign at the entrance.

Leonardo slowly stopped the van as the road ended in an unsurpassable field and idled, staring passively at the old church. He put the van into reverse suddenly, his hands trembling on the wheel as he fumbled to grip the gear shift and he put an arm around Cherry's seat as he craned his neck to see out the windows to turn around.

"What's wrong? Why are you shaking?" Cherry asked. "Are you having a sugar crash? We should get out and look around. Look how old that church is! I bet it's full of historical stuff. I could get a scholarship if I found an important building and kept it intact! It looks like nobody has been here in one hundred years! I wonder why there isn't a cemetery. There's even a bell in the tower!" Cherry's voice rose excitedly as she pointed out her window at the rotten belfry and wondered what she would say during newspaper interviews about the college student who discovered a local historical landmark.

Leonardo said, his voice thin and cracking as if about to shout or cry, "I don't like the chi vibe here. It makes... I just don't like it. I think this was a mistake. I'm sure Raph's hostage deliberately sent us here. I don't want to go in there."

"Don't worry, Believer. It's my job as Vessel of Chaos, anthropology student and Marxist to question everything. Not yours. Don't worry. All that we find in old dead places is information." Cherry put a reassuring hand on Leonardo's forearm and he instantly put the van in park as soon as she touched him. "Well, think about the beauty of an abandoned building. You know, all the people who sang hymns and their voices raising to God and the families."

"Oh, yes." Leonardo's voice trembled with repressed feeling and he kicked open the door, leaping out. "All those ignorant people persecuting people who are any different at all. Even if they aren't really different at all. I'm not different! We get along just fine, don't we?!" His voice rose with feeling and a bird flew away in the stiff silence of the woods. "Why are we so different? Raph says we're different, but he's wrong. He's paranoid. And so are all these people who fear those that they don't understand."

Cherry opened the van door and took a deep breath. "What did Raph say? I like the smell of rotting leaves. It smells like history. That wet organic smell, you know? It reminds me that the world is bigger than me and it ultimately doesn't care if a guy wants to vomit on me or if I fail a test." She scuffed a shoe in the black blanket of dead leaves under her feet.

"I guess you could see it that way," Leonardo said hesitantly. "I just smell something that used to be alive. I like smelling green things that are still in bloom. Then you always know that life is a cycle and it continues and when I'm gone my spirit will pass on to something else."

Cherry didn't want to hear a speech about Buddhist philosophies of reincarnation because it would only cause a fight. So he felt hope knowing that he might be reborn as a mushroom in somebody's salad? History held certainty. You know a person lived when you dig up their corpse. Everything else was just ashes scattered to the wind.

Leonardo put a hand out, signaling Cherry to stop. He drew a sword without a whisper of sound and then leaned forward, silently stepping into the tall grass like a green sprite. His eyes widened in surprise and he put the sword back in its scabbard, then glanced curiously into the thick trees. "Do mothers usually leave their little ones in the open?" Leonardo pointed into a small depression of grass directly in front of him.

A small brown animal curled up in a wall of field grass, its long bony legs tucked under itself. "A fawn? I don't think deer leave their babies and forage or anything. Mama deer isn't around? It's probably sick and she abandoned it." Cherry took a few steps towards the church, wondering if she should contact a professor or a local historical society after she investigated the building.

"We can't leave this little thing here alone! This is a very... unsettling place and it's alone! Call animal control on your phone and they can come pick it up." Leonardo held out his hand to the fawn and it raised its head, inspecting to the newcomer with ears flattened back warily.

"Don't touch it! Do you want to get rabies? Do we have to wait around for them then?" Cherry impatiently pulled out her phone. "I have no service here. And I don't want to call any government officials here to my discovered historical site. It's an animal. It can't feel weird voodoo chi vibes. Animals don't feel anything."

The fawn stood up on shaking weak legs and wobbled out of the brush towards Leonardo and sniffed his outstretched hand. "Look at this..." he said, smiling delightedly at his tiny new friend. "Somebody left you alone didn't they? I supposed you weren't scared since animals have no feelings." He glared at Cherry.

"No! They don't! It won't even notice if it dies. If you had left it alone, then it would have died in its sleep in a few hours. Now a coyote will hear it and eat is little face off. I hope you know that's your fault now." Cherry laughed and stared distractedly towards the decrepit building.

"Don't listen to her. She doesn't have maternal instinct at all. Come here!" Leonardo motioned for the fawn to come closer and within seconds it leaned against his calf, its legs splayed with exhaustion. "This fawn is still damp. I bet its mother just delivered it recently. Like maybe an hour ago. You're a little champ! Look at you walking around!"

"Do you two need to be alone?" Cherry asked sourly. "We're wasting time. Don't get attached. You can't keep wild animals as pets. It's against city ordinances or something. Look at its eyes!" The fawn blinked slowly up at Leonardo with huge dark eyes, almond shaped and full of innocence. "It looks kind of like you. If it rolled its eyes and sighed like a diva, then you two would be twins!"

Leonardo rolled his brown almost shaped-eyes to the heavens and sighed with exasperation. "Okay, let's check out this creepy old shack so that we can pick up the little one and take him to town to find a farm or a veterinarian to take care of him. We'll be back soon, okay!" he said with a gently reassuring voice as he scratched behind its ears.

They took a few steps into the tall dead grass and Cherry stopped, looking behind her. "Hey, you're little friend wants to come along."

The infant deer teetered in the tall grass, its head searching the foreign territory frantically. It opened its mouth and barked with distress.

"I'm lost!" Cherry said in a high pitched imitation of the fawn. "Mommy Leo! Come find me!"

"I'm coming! Just a second!" Leonardo instantly made his way back to the fawn and picked it up in his arms. "It hardly weighs a few pounds. I won't leave you behind! Let's go protect Cherry while she investigates the house of lies and death."

"Yeah, I might step on a rusty nail and need a tetanus shot." Cherry couldn't stop looking back at Leonardo carrying the tiny fawn in his arm and hoped she wasn't becoming infatuated with alien men carrying small innocent animals. Talk about a weird and narrow fetish. Good luck finding that online, Cherry. Maybe if she made fun of him, her stomach would stop contracting happily every time she looked at him. "You know, it sounds kind of like a squeaky toy when it makes noises. Does it do that when you squeeze its belly?"

Leonardo scoffed. "I'm not squeezing a newborn fawn! Leaving it to die is morally wrong and so is squeezing it for amusement. Now, you need a name, Little One..."

"It isn't wrong to let things die of natural causes." Cherry breathed in the scent of decayed wood and pulled off some grey boards nailed across the front door. White paint peeled off in flakes as she pried the blackened planks away. "They become part of the nitrogen cycle and part of the cultural memory of their tribe or something."

"I don't like this place and neither does little Sakura here. I think it's a girl. We would wait in the van, but I have to protect you," Leonardo held the little fawn to his cheek and then shoved a whole timber out of the wall and made his way around the doorframe. He brushed off a pew with one hand and sat down, placing Sakura the fawn on his lap. She lay her head down across his legs and closed her eyes, her ears twitching.

"You know..." Leonardo said in a weirdly low tone. "I believe that animals and people all have the same spirits. So we're not different. I mean, we are obviously, in some ways. But we all feel in the same way. And it isn't up to anybody else to tell them what they do or don't feel."

Cherry watched him petting the fawn. "Why is your face so red? You're diabetic, aren't you?"

"What?" Leonardo glanced up from his pet as if he couldn't remember the incoherent speech he'd just given.

She shook her head at him and picked up a hymnal off the floor and opened it. Some of the pages stuck together in clumps, but she could still read the print on the pages. The inside cover read FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, 1897. "I don't see any priest," Cherry said. "I don't even see a place for a priest to camp out or anything."

Leonardo pointed at the wall. "What is that?"

The words QUESTION EVERYTHING had been carved in the peeling white wallpaper across one of the wall. "It's weird that there aren't big windows on these wall. Churches usually have big stained glass windows all along the sides right? It would have been dark in here."

"Seems like Chaos would prefer her worshippers remain in darkness," Leonardo said. "Are we done here then? I don't see any signs of life. He must have had the first edition of CHAOS: FOR DUMMIES and all his information is invalid."

Cherry could tell that Leonardo was relieved. He smiled a little and scratched Sakura's head. She wiggled her tail happily. "There's a door," Cherry said, pointing to a metal trap door cut through the floorboards in the corner of the room. She ran eagerly to the trap door and tossed off piles of fallen ceiling planks and an overturned candleholder.

"Wait! I didn't see that when we came in!" Leonardo stood at her side with Sakura tucked under his arm like a purse. Her legs hung idly in space as she flicked her tail and attempted to lick his wrist, which was just out of reach. "I mean, I looked over the whole room and it literally wasn't there. This is strange. I don't like this. Get away from it! If we're going in, then I'm sure as hell not letting you go ahead of me unarmed!" Leonardo's voice rose angrily and echoed off the rotten walls.

He handed Sakura over to her and Cherry clung to its hot furry body as it barked and spun its legs, attempting to escape. "I don't think she likes me!"

"She probably heard you say she would get eaten by a coyote..." he muttered as he took her back and Sakura instantly calmed down. Leonardo tucked her in the crook of his arm and her pink tongue flicked his bicep. He drew a sword with his free hand and said, "Open the door then and stand back so that we can go ahead."

Cherry realized that he wouldn't leave the fawn alone in the church while they investigated the underground room because now he envisioned his little pet being eaten alive by a coyote while it barked helplessly for him. Leonardo, Alien Virginal Ninja Protector of Fawns.

She followed him down a concrete stairwell with chipped yellow guardrails covered in mildew. Water dripped from the splotchy corridor ceiling. A drop fell on a light bulb suspended from a pipe and sizzled. A dusty pile of gas masks lay in a corner at the foot of the stairs underneath a faded sign that read FALLOUT SHELTER. "Maybe we will find him. I bet there are living quarters down here. I studied fifties bomb shelters!" Cherry's voice reverberated excitedly down the hallway into the shadowy end.

Leonardo whipped around, eyes narrowed and angry. He whispered, "Quiet, please!" Somehow, his angry whispering didn't echo all the way down the corridor.

She nodded and then rolled her eyes at him as soon as he turned his back to her. "What's that thing up ahead?" she whispered. Her voice echoed down the hallway and back.

Leonardo sighed at her lack of stealth and warily crept ahead towards the bright blue object a few feet ahead cloaked in the shadowy gap between two dim bulbs hanging from the wet ceiling. He tapped it lightly with the end of a katana. Nothing happened.

It was a plastic blue barrel. Cherry recognized it.

Leonardo froze for a second and then flicked his sword back into its scabbard. He removed the lid with his free hand and leaned down to look inside. The lid clattered to the floor and he shoved past Cherry as if he didn't see her, heading back towards the stairs. "Come on!" he said. "We're leaving right now."

Cherry looked down in the barrel. The head of a doe lay at the bottom of the barrel in a puddle of blood lining the bottom. Its eyes stared black and its mouth opened slightly, frozen in a pained bark.

"Where's the door?" Leonardo asked, in a dull panic. "There aren't stairs here. This must be a trick. Do you know what's going on?" he urgently asked as he felt the solid concrete wall. The words NO EXIT were written in old yellow paint on the cracked surface. "This is where we came down."

Cherry's heart sped up, but she didn't panic. She reached out a hand and grabbed Leoardo's arm as he pounded irrationally on the solid wall, breathing hard. Sakura barked in his arms.

"What are you doing? You're the cool headed ninja. Calm down and breathe. Maybe there's... gas down here making us lightheaded? I don't know. But you need to keep it together. Calm down." Cherry listened for a familiar voice down the corridor.

He nodded and closed his eyes for a second, breathing steadily and deeply. "There's something wrong with this place. I mean, besides the doors disappearing. I'm sorry. Here, can you take her, please?"

Leonardo handed Sakura the fawn over to Cherry again and she held on tightly as it fought to escape her and run back to her security object. Cherry decided that she would do the same thing if she were a frightened animal. Leonardo's arms were much more secure than her own.

This time he pulled out both swords and walked down the corridor into the shadows, disappearing entirely, leaving her alone with the struggling fawn.


	9. Temple of Chaos

_I just had the painful duty of informing AlexHamato that I incompetently letting the cats all get fleas because I forgot to give them their flea drops and was ordered to keep writing this story as penance. _

_Now that I'm thinking about it, both AlexHamato and I are having really difficult times at work lately and so we want to keep bitch-slapping Leo as therapy. _

_He'll be okay. He'll be fine. He'll be okay. He'll be okay_, Cherry chanted repeatedly in her head. Sakura the fawn kicked her chest, wriggling to follow Leo down the black corridor. Then she realized that she was saying it out loud, her voice echoing quiet fear.

Sakura bleeted loudly and Cherry held on tighter. "You can't go with him!" she said pointlessly to the wild animal in her arms. "I don't blame you. I'd rather be with him too."

Cherry listened to her own breathing for several minutes, blocking out Sakura's pleading squeals and finally said, "Well, fuck it. We're not running away like girls in a slasher movie. Come on. We're tough women... We'll go get him and then go find a hotel with a big mini bar and a hot tub. You could go for a little swim. How about that?" Cherry envisioned eating boiled venison for dinner and laughed, deciding not to relay the joke to Leonardo when she finally found him.

She took a timid step into the shadow, swallowed and marched unseeingly into blindness. Cold water seeped into her socks. She nearly reassured Sakura that she would carry her through the water, but realized that it would be pointless and the stealthy ninja would roll his eyes eyes when she finally told him about it, while they safe drank cinnamon fire whiskey in the hot tub.

A dim green light illuminated a thick metal door with a window surrounded in bolts. She couldn't see through the small window, but the was open an inch and dirty light ringed the door frame. She whispered to Sakura, "He's probably in there..."

The door opened and a skinny mean wearing a black hooded cloak and a mask made out of intertwined deer antler stepped into the corridor, holding out his arms. Blood dripped from his fingers and plopped into the murky water under his feet. "You made it, little Cherry Pop! That is a stupid name and you should change it but the bones say what they mean, don't they? And big Cherry Pop. You have your mother's likeness," the man in the antler mask said, bending down to speak to Sakura, who kicked harder than ever. Cherry lost her grip and the fawn fell to the ground and then scampered around the cloaked man and disappeared into the room.

"Are you the Priest of Chaos?" Cherry asked, forcing herself to sound like she was there on purpose and not a girl lost in a horror movie. "I'm looking for some information."

"Yes, and I was having a nice conversation with the Lover until his tongue got in the way and then the Dead Master had to silence him, so we're all alone now," the priest said and then sighed. "But we'll make due. Come and sit! The drink is nearly ready!"

Cherry followed him around the half closed door and pressed her back to the wall, finding no strategic place to hide in the open metal room. A huge fireplace filled a whole side of the wall and a small box with a few objects on top sat in the grate where the fire should have been. Sakura lay in the fireplace curled into a ball next to the box. An old Formica table and set of matching chairs from the 1940's stood in the middle of the room.

"Now I must find the Dead Master. He went out, but I will find him!" the Priest of Chaos skipped merrily across the room and left through another door with a large sign that said FALLOUT SHELTER nailed over the porthole window.

Cherry inspected the fireplace and said to Sakura, "It looks creepy in there. What if a fire comes on and it cooks you. Come out. Come on!" She clicked her tongue encouragingly, but Sakura shut her eyes and sighed, ignoring her.

The box looked like a homemade altar. Cherry took a step closer, wondering what Chaos chose to utilize in her worship. A nuclear bomb seemed fitting. An old baby doll with no clothes and plastic molded hair lay in the middle of the altar with paring knives embedded in both its eye sockets and another in its chest where its heart would have been if it were a real person. Beside the doll lay a picture of a smiling man from the 1950's, but its mouth had been torn out of the picture leaving a jagged hole in the middle. Something wet lay on the back of the altar and Cherry knelt down to see it better, then jumped up when she realized that it must be an animal tongue, probably from the mother deer in the barrel. "We should go. It isn't right for you to lay next to your dead mother's tongue..." Cherry said. "Come on. He's not here."

The Priest of Chaos came back, humming the Addams Family theme song and then snapped his fingers twice. "Go sit down at the table! I'm going to get something for you to drink!" He shooed her away, smiling.

Cherry reluctantly sat at the table, making sure to face the fireplace so she could keep an eye on it and both doors at the same time. The Priest sat down across from her, smiling under his antler mask and then pulled out a Ken and Barbie from his coat that looked as though they'd lived through nuclear war. "You have questions, so I will explain. That's why I'm here! I'm so excited! I've never gotten to explain! I tried to explain to the Dead Master, but he hit me and told me to be quiet because he didn't care! But you are driven by wisdom and so you will listen! I'll try to be interesting!" He cleared his throat and held up Barbie and said in a girlish voice, "My name is Chaos. I'm the original source of both everything and nothing. I'm really old." Then he held up Ken and said in a low voice, "Hello, I'm Eros the Progenator and I'm your son, but also kinda your lover because we totally do it and have a bunch of children that turn into Nox and Erebus and Gaia and stuff. But I'm all about life and order and I'm the first to feel love. You don't feel anything because you're nothing at all. I can overlook that, but we have a really bad relationship." He alternately held up Barbie and said, "There's no communication because I repel everything that's positive, like light and matter and energy and stuff. Wheeeeee!" He moved Ken across the table.

"I am so not Barbie!" Cherry protested. "I never even owned a Barbie! And I do not repel love and everything and feel nothing! Of course, the female is the bad guy in the story. This is just anti-feminist bullshit, isn't it?"

The Priest shushed her impatiently and said, "Now Eros kind of broke up with Chaos a long time ago after the children were grown up and he wants to make sure that she doesn't destroy everything he made so she can put everything back to a glorious state of sacred negation."

"Why do you worship this thing?" Cherry asked suddenly. "You do realize that she wants to negate you too right?"

The Priest shrugged. "I live in a bomb shelter and eat fifty year old baked bean rations. I have nothing else to lose. Wait! I can't let my guest go hungry!" He scampered to the fireplace and opened a side of the box, mumbling and talking to himself.

Where was Leonardo?! Cherry thought desperately, wondering if she should demand answers from the Priest or play along. She settled on playing along because Leonardo was probably just out of ear shot waiting for the right time to creep out of the shadows, saying something cool.

"Here you go, Cherry Pop Senior!" the Priest said as he pushed a plate shaped like a heart in front of her. It was the deer tongue. He set down a glass full of blood. "What's wrong? Don't you want it?" The Priest smirked and his antler mask titled on his face.

"Eating deer tongue is a noble Native American tradition," Cherry said, picking up the tongue and taking a bite of the rubbery bloody muscle. "Only ignorant people would be afraid." She tried not to vomit as she chewed and looked him in the eye as she washed it down with the coppery blood. "You were saying about Chaos and Eros? They broke up like Scarlett and Rhett."

The Priest sat back down and said, "Oh, there's nothing much. Eros is looking for a champion to fight for him. Same old Lover. Always trying to be heroic. You know, Mistress Chaos has a problem now. She has an embarrassment of riches with both you and..."

Hal Barton held the side door open with one arm and rolled his eyes. "I can't believe you actually came. Aren't blonde girls supposed to run away when they run into scary things or at least scream for their boyfriend to save them in these situations?"

"Well, not in this situation!" Cherry nearly stood up, but gripped the sides of the chair, her mouth half full of raw tongue. "Want some tongue? It's fresh."

"I've had my fill," Hal said. He sat next to the Priest and said, "I will have a refreshment though," and grabbed the glass of blood, drinking it all down. "It's hot out there! So I guess we fight to the death now."

The Priest shrugged apologetically.

"I'm not fighting you to the death!" Cherry threw the tongue on the floor and said, "You can be Chaos' bitch! I'm done! Congratulations!"

Where was Leonardo?

An arm hung down from the top of the chimney. A green muscular arm... Blood dripped down the fingertips and onto the mutilated baby doll's face.

"Is something wrong?" Hal asked. "I didn't think you were done being dramatic yet."

Leonardo was up inside the chimney bleeding? Hopefully with his arm still attached. Her mind reflexively retreated to warm moments listening to Leonardo lecture or smelling his skin. Kissing his shoulder. She prepared to block out the imminent memory of Leonardo's severed arm falling out of the chimney.

But the hand twitched suddenly and blood spattered the doll's face. Then the hand raised back up into the chimney, disappearing completely.

"I'm just sitting here thinking about how we all want the same thing," Cherry said, forcing her attention on Hal Barton's pasty bloated face against her will. "I don't want to be Chaos' chosen girl or whatever I am. I'm done. I came here to find out how to get rid of her. You clearly like the title of Chaos' bitch. So I abdicate. Just let me leave."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Leonardo lower himself down onto the altar, blood dripping down both forearms and his chin like a ghost rising from a grave. He stopped and looked at the bloody altar, searching frantically, yet silently for something and then looking straight into Cherry's eyes, straight through Hal Barton and the priest and his eyes opened pathetically and he shook his head no, pointing at her.

She stopped eating the tongue mid-bite. Why was his chin so bloody...?

"What's wrong? Is it undercooked?" the Priest asked, his eyes full of culinary concern.

Was this Leo's tongue? Did they cut out poor Leo's tongue and then feed it to her and had she just scarfed it down, hoping they didn't see her as too weak to accept a pointless dare? Well, she couldn't do anything about it now. Leo's tongue was now in her stomach and he had both swords drawn, his face expressionless.

Hal Barton said, "Chaos wants a contest. She didn't think you'd play along so she wanted us to hurt that animal that you want to fuck."

Cherry pretended Leonardo wasn't in the room. Don't give him away. He's dead and stuffed in the chimney and you don't know it. She channeled every sappy anime episode with wailing heartbroken characters that she'd ever seen in her life and jumped to her feet, trying to imagine Luffy on that annoying show with all the crazy screaming hysterical pirates and yelled, "YOU CAN'T TALK ABOUT HIM LIKE THAT! I LOVE HIM! WHERE IS HE?! WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?!" She lunged over the table, knocking Ken and Barbie on the floor.

Leonardo had fallen to his knees, wincing and covering his mouth, blood oozing in a steady stream and puddling on the ground beneath him. Sakura leaned against his side.

The Priest grabbed a fireplace poker from a bucket of coals that had been sitting in the corner of the room and said, "We left business unfinished. We can't let the Lover bleed out all over the floor! Not after we just used the last of the bleach!"

Leonardo made a wet sound deep in his throat that sounded like a choke and grabbed Sakura with one arm and then turned around, tucking his limbs and head forward behind his exoskeleton. Cherry yelled, "Get away!" and stood on the table, ready to leap over it and onto Hal Barton's back.

But a blast of razor sharp air shot all around the room and the table flew backwards. Cherry fell through space, landing on her back with the table splintered around her. She crawled a few paces and croaked out, "Where are you...?"

Not that he could answer. His tongue was in her stomach.

The blast carried Leonardo all the way into the other wall, the tiny deer clutched limp in his arm and his swords several feet in opposite directions. The Priest already knelt over him, the hot iron poking down his mouth as he held it open with the other hand as if force feeding an unruly animal. "Filthy beast and its... words... they hurt like knives, don't they, Dead Master?"

"If you say so," Hal Barton said, as he watched with arms crossed. "Its blood tastes thin. So are you ready to fight now, girl?"

The Priest pressed the hot iron into Leonardo's mouth and he cried out and his limbs jerked in unconscious reaction, but didn't reach out to stop the torment, then fell limp again as The Priest pulled it out of his mouth, smoldering.

Cherry gripped onto the ruined table and felt the wood turning to ash under her hands, as she stared at them, standing over him and hurting him and calling him a thing.

"What are you doing, Cherry Senior?" The Priest asked and then scurried over to the table, which was now a great glowing ember and the floor melted under her feet. But she felt cold. Enveloped in a cocoon of ice, pushing all of the hate out at them. At The Priest and his stupid ignorant deer mask and his stupid robes. And he hurt the best person on the planet and the only thing she loved and fed his tongue to her on a platter. Freezing cold gusts of wind radiated from her lungs and burned into The Priest's featureless face. He yelped and pulled off the antler mask as it charred into his skin and threw it to the floor, exposing the mutilated mess of layer upon layer of scars. He had no discernible nose; only a hole left, his eyelids deformed and sagging and his mouth slashed and healed several times. And now this pathetic thing could still speak and Leonardo couldn't? When all he said were good things? She reached out and grabbed his face with one hand.

Hal Barton ran out the side door, slamming it behind him.

She supposed she'd won the contest.

Cherry reached into The Priest's mouth and plucked out his tongue and let is dissolve in her outstretched hand and then grabbed both cheeks and shouted, "You should've hurt ME!"

But Leonardo rolled over and stood up, he staggered a step with Sakura still in his arms and then regained his usual composure and gestured for her to stop, waving his free hand and shook his head no, frantically, eyes running with pained tears.

She instantly dropped the priest and he disintegrated into a pile of ashes as she watched. Then everything became warm and sore again and the floor didn't soften as she stepped towards him. Cherry put a hand on Leonardo's cheek and he stared at her, his eyes full and then reached out with one bloody hand, his forearm covered in gashes and traced the words DON'T, GOOD EVELYN across her bare arm with his blood.

"We need to go and find a hot tub," she muttered, "And... whiskey..."

Leonardo put an arm around her waist to help her along, but she shoved it away and put her arm around him. She felt him sigh and his head and body sagged as she pulled his weight into her body. She glanced around the room to make sure that he'd remembered his swords and saw that they were already safely at home in their holsters.

She pushed the side door open and a gust of cool air blew in her face and crickets chirped in the welcoming tall grass. She pointed across the field and said, "Look, the church is all the way over there. So the van is that way. Don't worry. We'll go find somewhere nice to sleep. No, we'll take a shower. And it'll be really sexy. Don't worry." He pulled her along through the grass in a slightly different and more accurate direction towards the van and then hesitated, letting her go. He pushed the deer into her shaking arms and drew both his weapons, listened briefly and then put them away, running at full speed towards the edge of the woods.

"What's going on?!" she heard an unfamiliar voice ask. "I'm tracking that maniac. He force blasted me with his brain a bunch of times, but I figured out how to put my back to him and duck behind trees and stuff. Is that the chick? Hey, what..." And then she caught up enough to see that it was one of his brothers. This one wore an orange mask and grabbed Leonardo's bloody face, forcing his mouth open. "Holy fucking hell! What... That sick bastard. Okay..." She stood a few feet away, trembling with shocked stress, Sakura squirming in her arms to be reunited with Leonardo.

"He... they cut out his tongue. I didn't see it. I guess I did. They made me eat it. Where did he go? Should we drive away? Is he in the van? I killed The Priest. I won the contest," Cherry said, walking close to Leonardo and leaning her arm against his as she waited for instructions.

His brother stood with a hand over his mouth for a few seconds, apparently too confused to respond and then said, "Well, don't worry about... ate his tongue? You didn't notice when... Okay, not important. Leo, are you...? Is he bleeding a lot? I know a place where you guys should go. It's a safe house." He babbled at Leonardo in Japanese, looking sidelong at Cherry as he spoke.

Leonardo groaned and nodded, wiping the his bloody chin with the back of his hand.

"Okay, I needed a place to use as a base kind of because Hal's hung his shingle here for a while now and Don magically bought a place for the back taxes. So you can go there. It's a real house. I'm going to get going. I can still tell where he's going to go. He has a truck so he's on foot and he's slow as a drunk... uh... he's fucking slow, okay! I'm going to have to follow him. He's too dangerous to leave alone. Call Don and get him out to see you!" His brother grabbed him in a burly hug and said, "I'll stop by and see if you're okay if I can make it happen. I mean... I don't know... I'm so sorry, man! I'll get this guy."

Leonardo gruffly shoved his brother away and stared at the ground.

"Hey, can you guys give me a ride? I think we can beat him to the truck if we hurry. Did you make a new friend, Leo?" his brother asked, pointing at the tiny deer clutched in Leonardo's arms.

Leonardo glanced at Cherry and blinked rapidly, then stepped away, robbing her of the comfort of his skin and body heat. He pulled Sakura out of Cherry's arms and the little deer curled up against his chest.

Of course he didn't want to be near her. He had just watched her eat his own tongue and now it swam around in her stomach. "I should just... you take him home. He's too hurt to keep going," Cherry said to his brother. "What is your name?"

"Oh, I'm Michelangelo. Don't bother trying to remember it and just call me Mike," he said distractedly, as he tried to persuade Leonardo to let him hold the deer. "I'm not going to hurt the thing! We need to let it loose and get going. Why are you trying to carry it like a purse?"

"That's Sakura," Cherry said. "Her mother's dead. We need to get her some milk or something soon."

She could hitch a ride into town and buy a gun and do it that way. Eliminate herself as a variable and spare him more suffering. Could she drown herself? It sounded too hard. But would that end all of this if she died? Would she explode in a fireball of crushing destruction as soon as she died? She could at least go on her own and solve this herself. Find this Eros that the Priest told her about.

"What do we do, Leo?" Mike asked.

Leonardo opened his mouth, as if he were about to speak and then clamped his mouth shut, turned and walked through the trees towards the van, Sakura still under his arm.

"I'm sorry!" Mike said, trotting after him. "Habit! I don't know how to be tactful here. I think she's right. You need to see Don, pronto. I mean, your arms are all chopped up. How does this guy keep getting the drop on you like this? I've been watching him and right before he goes nuclear he has this little tell where he blinks with his left a little bit. It's like hardly a thing at all... But who am I kidding. It's probably just luck and he's going to blast my head off. Did he blast your tongue out? What happened...?"

Cherry ran a few paces to keep up and said, "The Priest did it because the Lover talks too much."

Leonardo ignored her as they stepped over the tall grass on the outskirts of the woods and into the grey of the clearing on the two-track road, the ground lit up with moonlight, the dead grass glowing white. Mike said, "Yeah, that's lousy when... Lovers... talk... I'll drive, Leo. You and your... you and her can ride in the back with little Bambi."

But Leonardo opened the front passenger door and jumped inside, holding Sakura on his lap. Cherry slid the backdoor open and got inside, slamming it shut. The force echoed along the road.

Cherry stared at the clock on her phone, trying to ignore the pointed looks from Mike as he looked between Leonardo and then tried to watch Cherry in the rearview mirror alternately, no doubt, watching them to see if they were watching each other. Curse the world for noisy, inquisitive siblings, she thought. Then thanked her parents because she was an only child. Leonardo pet Sakura on his lap and watched the highway markers flash past.

"What is Eros?" Cherry asked Mike. "Have either of you heard of it?"

Just as Cherry asked her question and Mike said something about cupids on Valentine's Day cards, he slammed on the brakes. A herd of deer, black in the night, rushed silently out of the trees and leapt across the road in a sea of slender bodies and legs, floating along the ground, one after another. "Wow, that's a big herd," Cherry said.

"Eyes of a ninja, right!" Mike said, and then playfully punched Leonardo on the arm. She could see his face fall with concern when he received no attention and then he wrung the steering wheel, watching the deer flying past the van, blocking the road completely.

"That's a really big herd. That's more like an ocean of deer. Do you see how many there are?" she asked, her voice rising with amazement. Deer filled the road into the horizon, topping the hill in the distance.

Leonardo raised one arm, shrugged and then pointed at his closed mouth. Of course, he'd seen it. But he hadn't been able to mention it.

"You guys can follow it. I'll go back and look for Hal Barton maybe. I could probably burn him into cinders if he made me mad enough. Just take Leo somewhere else that's safer..." Cherry said.

She flinched as Leonardo slammed a fist into the dashboard and the car reverberated with the force.

"I think that's the new signal for disapproval," Mike said, unphased at the violent outburst.

Sakura bleated with fright and Leonardo held her up to his cheek and nuzzled her into quiet submission, then opened the van door and stepped out. More deer came in an endless tidal wave of graceful forms, all blending together in the dark. Hooves clomped quietly on the pavement in a quiet percussion symphony and then rustled into the brush and out of site. Leonardo followed them past the tree line and disappeared.

"Oh, fucking Dramatic Teen Ninja!" Cherry grumbled.

Mike grabbed her wrist and said, "Dude! Watch it! He's maimed for life because of whatever happened and I hope you're not responsible for it because I kill things just as well as he does." He let go of her arm and shook off the serious expression. "He's entitled to some drama. And you stay with him, as per the plan. No running off on a solo suicide mission of guilt and remorse."

"It isn't guilt or remorse! I didn't do anything!" she snarled as she hopped out of the van, the deer still thundering in front of the van. She slammed the door on his kind and sympathetic face, which made her irrationally angry for no reason and she followed Leonardo and Sakura into the forest, listening to the rustling of the never-ending deer herd.


	10. Temple of Eros

_I have a million things to do in this next section, so I'm going to write it all out in a long marathon and then chop it into smaller chapters. There will be some zany guest stars coming up and I'll credit them at THE END of the chapter so that I don't give the game away. I mean, they're like crossover characters, but I don't want to list it as a crossover. They're here to amuse me, and hopefully you. I feel like I didn't do a good enough job on this chapter, but I had to get from Point A to Point B. _

Cherry followed the pounding hooves into the woods, scanning the mist covered undergrowth for signs of the wayward ninja. Her stomach bubbled and she wondered if she was morally obligated to purge or to allow her body to digest her friend's tongue. Neither option seemed decent.

"Leo!" she shouted and her voice echoed over the rumbling of the deer herd. Then she shook her head. Leo couldn't even answer.

The sun cast a golden shadow through the hovering mist and clouded the tree line ahead like a mirage. All she could see were the mingling black outlines of deer leaping into the distance past the young trees.

The undergrowth thinned into dry sparse grass and sloped down a hill that led to a black rippling lake. There was no shore besides a steep bank worn away to jutting tree roots dipping into the calm water. A dragonfly buzzed past as Cherry looked into the golden reflection of the thin trees and thought it would be a perfect place to clean off the blood covering Leonardo so that she didn't keep nearly passing out every time she looked at him. She wondered if he'd climbed a tree to get away from them and glanced up at the swaying and creaking tree tops, concluding that they weren't strong enough to support his weight.

The deer herd rushed past the bank of the lake and a few deer stumbled on tree roots, nearly falling in. Then she wondered if Leonardo had set Sakura loose into the herd. Which seemed slightly cruel since she would still die because she had no mother to feed her.

But she still couldn't see Leonardo. She sighed and shrugged at the shadowy lake, as if it could read her frustration. Then a dark shape moved in the middle of the water, sending ripples in every direction and Cherry shouted with surprise. At first all she could see was a pair of brown eyes, watching her from the middle of the water. She blinked again and realized that Leonardo had been in the middle of the lake, standing perfectly still the entire time, his body blending in with the green mossy lake bottom. "You just took a few years off of my life, precious!" she said, as she kicked off her shoes and waded into the water.

"Ouch, ouch, ouch," she said as rough stones poked the soft bottoms of her feet and slimy mud slid between her vulnerable toes. "Yuck."

Leonardo waded back out of the lake, watery blood dripping down his forearms and legs. He sat soaking wet on the bank and then grabbed his gear from against a damp tree. Cherry sat next to him and a shiver of disgust ran through her body. She had no right to talk to him, let alone sit near him after what happened. And touching him was out of the question.

She sat quivering next to him, aware of his pained eyes watching her. Leonardo grabbed his equipment, his swords dangling dangerously as if about to fall out of their holsters and moved further down the bank, away from her.

"Do you need help?" she asked faintly and then knelt down at the lake's edge to wash the blood she had suddenly noticed off her hands. Her reflection looked pale and blood smeared around her mouth like a vampire. She reached down for a handful of water and splashed her face and neck, letting her shirt get wet. "I need to get make up. I look like a ghoul. Do you need help?" she asked again, not daring to look at him as she dried her face on the bottom half of her shirt.

But she felt Leonardo crouch next to her and hold out a packet of instruments bound in a blue canvas pouch and offered her a needle and thick plastic thread.

"Do you want me to thread this?" she asked him, searching his face for a sign of communication.

He looked passively over the lake and sighed at the herd of deer crashing into the distance, his face hard with repressed pain. Little Sakura nuzzled his thigh.

She used trembling wet fingers to thread the needle and handed it back to him, then looped her arms around his bicep, leaning against his shoulder while he sewed up his own gashes on his forearms. "Don't poke out my eyeballs," she said as she felt the thread being pulled through his skin and back into the air.

Leonardo sighed.

Eventually, Mikey wandered out into the forest and demanded that they get back in the van and head back to civilization. "Stop sitting out here moping," Mike said gently, putting a hand on Leonardo's free shoulder. "I get that this sucks major Kluh-sized balls, but we need to get moving. I know that Don is headed over here and he needs to take a look at you." He inspected his brother's stitching and told him that he got a gold star for straight lines.

Cherry pursed up her lips and said, "I don't think it's a great time to joke about what happened to him."

"Well, is it a better time to brood and cry and scream? Will that help?" Mike snapped and then blinked a few times. "Sorry, I'm used to so much drama and stuff. Somebody needs to be the guy who doesn't break down all the time."

Leonardo nodded and then slugged Mikey in the arm.

"It's my burden!" Mikey said and stood up. "Let's get going then."

Cherry followed the two of them with Sakura kicking in her arms, listening to Mike's jokes and rolling her eyes.

* * *

They found a gas station in the middle of the trees with only one ancient pump and a sign out front with half the letters missing, relating the prices of milk and eggs from the 80's, or at least from a time period with greater rates of inflation.

Leonardo and Mikey got dressed in baggy sweats and jeans that lay crammed in boxes in the back of the van and followed Cherry into the convenience store. Mikey immediately went to the potato chips and said, "We need sustenance!"

Cherry followed Leonardo to the medical supplies and tried to hold on to his fingers. He slid his finger tips against her palm before withdrawing his hands into his pockets. "Do you need pain medication? What am I saying? Of course you do!" She picked up a bottle of Tylennol and Leonardo shook his head and pointed at a bottle of Ibuprofen. She read the expiration dates on the bottles and wondered if she could ask for a discount based on the narrow timeframe of usability on the btottles.

She noticed several brands of condoms nearby and said, "Glow in the dark condoms? I bet that's the same company that made my glow in the dark thong!"

Leonardo looked at the boxes of condoms and then made a rather dramatic gesture and covered his face with his hands.

Cherry giggled at the affectation and said, "You might not fit those. You're a beast..."

He put his chin in the air proudly and shrugged.

"Hey, guys! I got all kinds of food for the road. I need to get more junk to clean your wounds. What do we get to clean a severed tongue?" Mikey asked as he poked randomly at the dusty medical supplies on the shelf.

A man stood in front of the magazine rack reading a Penthouse magazine. He wore a brown coat over a red and black Spandex bodysuit, like a superhero in a comic book. Cherry wondered if he was a cosplayer that had gotten lost on his way to a convention. He said, "What do you do for a severed tongue? I usually use super glue until it fixes itself. Oops, did I just say that out loud?" She couldn't see his mouth move because his head was covered with a matching red and black hood white cloth eye sockets that popped out as he shifted his face under the material. A pair of katanas strapped to his back caught on a rack of dish drainers and they clattered on the floor. Other items bulged unseen under his coat. Cherry glanced at the front counter for a clerk to report the possible shoplifter.

Leonardo glared suspiciously at the katanas and rolled his eyes.

The comic book wannabe pointed a red gloved hand at Cherry and said, "Hey, aren't you in last Spring's issue, babe? You look familiar."

"No! I don't do porn!" Cherry said, taking a step backwards as he flashed the magazine centerfold at them.

Mikey said, "Dude..." as the naked woman's anatomy flashed in front of his eyes.

Leonardo put his hands on his hips and glowered, unable to lecture.

The comic book wannabe said, "Are you headed to the Temple of Eros for the competition? You have that shits-honor look. You're headed up that way right? Could you give me a ride? Mine just bailed on me. Damn Hydra Bob! Just because I let him get taken prisoner by that crazed AcidFace guy! He took our hover craft from the future and went back to report on me to Hydra. Well, I hope a zombie eats him! That ungrateful turd!" He pulled a cellphone out of his coat and poked at the screen. "Come on, Hydra Bob! Tell me you didn't get eaten by zombies, little buddy!"

Mikey said, "Sure, if you'll pitch in for gas. I got plenty of food!" He held up six plastic bags full of groceries. "They're getting the medical supplies. I'll show you to our transport. What's your name?"

"Wade Wilson. Are you an alien or a Hydra experiment or a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle?" Wade asked as he looked Leo and Mike over.

Cherry scoffed. "Obviously they're aliens. I don't know what the fuck you just called them."

"You can sit with me, Princess," Wade said as he left with Mikey and headed outside towards the van.

Leonardo shook his head and then facepalmed dramatically.

"Don't worry. I'll protect you," Cherry said.

An older man with a small dried up face like a raisin shuffled out from behind the counter and said, "How are you doing, kids? You better make up your minds before we close. I got to get home to take my son to his methadone treatment." He scratched his ear and flakes of dandruff rained onto his shoulder. "Why are you looking at condoms, boy?" The clerk addressed Cherry's breasts and said, "You're with that big fella looking for the Eros competition right? Not this boy here." The store clerk tried to peer under Leonardo's hood at his green skin and said, "Looks like he's already caught something that you don't want to catch."

Leonardo grabbed a bottle of Ibuprofen and headed to the counter, watching the ground, his hands in his pockets. The store clerk rang him up and Leonardo practically threw the money on the counter. He gestured hurriedly at Cherry to follow him.

"Just a second, precious," she said to Leonardo, glaring at the store clerk and his condescending head covered in disgusting dandruff. "I'll be right there. I have to get some girlie things."

It wasn't a lie. She didn't have any tampons in her backpack and didn't want to be caught unawares in a car full of armed men. Cherry hurriedly grabbed a pack of tampons that had been sitting on the shelf for fifteen years and then went back to the store clerk. She asked, "Could you point out your biggest condoms? I don't think the ones on your shelf will fit my boyfriend. You know the guy in the hoodie?"

The clerk blinked slowly and then shuffled back to the contraceptive aisle. "This is all we got, miss. He needs big ones? They stretch as big as your leg, you know. How big could he need?" He picked up a condom box and read the label.

"None of these are big enough. He breaks through them like tissue paper. Do you have any flavored ones? Or black ones? These are all so boring. Don't you have any lube?" And to prove her point to the utmost, she bought at least ten packets of condoms in various flavors, the biggest size she could find and three different bottles of lubricant. She put the tampons on the top of the bag and then went out to the van, tossing it under one of the seats, instantly forgetting about it.

Sakura whined in the back of the van next to Wade Wilson and Cherry grabbed her, sitting her on her lap. "Hey, you stopped crying. You do like me!" Cherry said.

Wade asked, "So what's with Bambi? That's our dinner right? There's not enough meat on that thing to make a chimichanga."

Leonardo whipped around in his seat to glare at Wade, his face full of animated loathing and then shook his head furiously.

"Okay, whatever. I'll be happy with my chips. Don't worry, Bambi. You're safe with Deadpool. Just head that way," Deadpool said as he pointed out the front of the van between Mikey in the driver's seat and Leonardo, the passenger.

Mikey looked at Deadpool's hand and said, "What are you pointing at, dude? That's a tree."

"I'm pointing as the crow flies. Don't you have guns on this thing so you can mow through trees that get in the way? Fine. Just go left then." Deadpool unzipped his coat, revealing a utility belt full of machine guns and grenades.

Cherry tried not to stare at Wade's ammunition, thinking it might seem rude. "So, Wade. What do you do for a living?" she asked.

Wade pulled out a grenade and rattled the pin at Sakura. "Funny. Don't babies like it when you rattle things at them? Maybe it's deaf. I'm a mercenary and all around badass. I'm also an Avenger in my spare time. They always have me on call, but I've had to tell Nick Fury to stop calling me, begging pathetically for my help. I have more important things to do."

"Really?" Mikey asked as he steered with one hand and ate potato chips with the other. He offered the bag to Leonardo, who shook his head no and looked out the passenger window. "That's so cool, Deadpool. I can't believe that we just met an Avenger! Can you get Black Widow's autograph for me?"

They drove for twenty minutes listening to Wade yammering about his incredible life with the Avengers. Cherry wondered why most of his stories revolved around Deadpool following Avengers while they tried to either kill him or out run him. Leonardo rolled his eyes so much at Deadpool's stories that she wondered if his eyeballs would get stuck up in his head.

"STOP!" Deadpool shouted randomly as they drove peacefully along the starlit road, the night breeze blowing Cherry's hair across her face. "That's it!"

Mikey stomped on the brake pedal and Cherry flew forward into the back Leonardo's seat. Mikey said, "Where's what? We're in the middle of the highway!"

Deadpool zipped up his jacket and said, "Okay, let's get going. I have to hurry and get Eros' prizes so I can be back home before Blind Al takes advantage of my absence and cancels the Playboy Channel again."

After several minutes sorting the remaining bags of food that Mikey had bought, they stood next to the van and waited while Leonardo set up a new phone that Mikey had bought him at the gas station. "That's touching, thinking of your brother like that," Deadpool said. "Now hurry up!"

Cherry put on her backpack and then held Sakura, waiting for Leonardo to finish searching the van for remaining food.

"Not to rush you, dude, but I need to go back to look for Hal Barton, you know," Mikey said as he held the van door open for his brother, as he leaned inside, searching the back of the van.

Leonardo gasped loudly and dropped a plastic bag on the highway pavement, spilling out bottles of lubricant and packets of condoms. He hurriedly packed them all back in the bag and offered it to Mikey.

"What? I didn't buy those! Take them with you! April will kill me if I come home with a bag full of sex junk. She hated it when I left a Taco Bell wrapper in here." Mikey slammed the van door shut.

Leonardo held the bag uncertainly and then grabbed Cherry by the shoulders.

Deadpool said, "Hey, blondie, thanks for thinking ahead and being prepared. I appreciate that."

"I got them for Leo!" she hissed and then bit her bottom lip awkwardly.

Leonardo's eyes widened and he turned her around and unzipped her backpack. She heard her homework crunching as he jammed the plastic back on top and then zipped it shut.

Mikey grabbed Leonardo's arm and said, "Okay, I know it might be the end of the world, but dying a virgin isn't the worst that could happen." He gave Leonardo a manly hug and said, "Don't do anything that I wouldn't do. I know that doesn't rule much out. Wade, uh... see ya... Don't piss my brother off or he'll like... kill you... okay?"

Leonardo pulled out his phone and typed rapidly.

Cherry's phone instantly beeped and she pulled it out. She read: _condoms?_

"I was a Girl Scout. They teach us to always be prepared. We might need to make balloon animals later."

He rolled his eyes and sent another text that read: _wade is crazy be careful._

She watched Wade play hackey sack with a grenade and she took a few steps away from him, towards the grassy ditch. "I noticed, precious..." she muttered.

Then another text: _you ate my tongue why? Are you sick now?_

She stared at the screen for a few seconds and didn't move or answer. Eventually, she shook her head no.

Leonardo looked at the pavement and then gestured for Sakura, opening his arms for her. Cherry passed her over and Sakura's thin legs stopped twitching with anxiety as soon as she was safely against his chest and happily wiggled her tail, shaking half of her tiny body.

"Let's go already!" Wade said, throwing his hands up in the air in exasperation. The grenade flew a foot in the air and he caught it in his hand. "Whoops. Where do you think you're going?" He tucked it back on his utility belt. He bowed and waved ahead of himself as if presenting Cherry at court for the Queen of England. "Ladies first!" he said.

Cherry grabbed a long branch from the ditch and tried to twist off a stray branch. Leonardo plucked the half dead twig off the side with ease and ushered her ahead. "Okay, thanks," she said, flattered at the dual displays of chivalry.

They walked for half an hour and Cherry tried to think positive thoughts about the exercise and to block out Wade's incessant talking. She felt sorry for Leonardo, unable to interrupt or interject common sense into the discussion. Cherry pretended she was a great anthropologist in a jungle in South America and that they might be attacked at any moment by a boa constrictor and then replayed Ka singing in The Jungle Book in her head. Finally, she asked, "Am I even going the right way?"

"You're going fine. If you go off course, I'll grab you to let you know," Deadpool said from directly behind her.

Cherry heard some brush rustling suddenly and a loud thump.

"Your green boyfriend just told me that I'll say it out loud instead of grabbing you," Wade said again, still directly behind her.

"Why are you guys behind me? Can't you come up here and walk level?" she asked, now trying to remember all the words to Welcome to the Jungle. A bat fluttered in the treetops overhead in the darkness and she gripped her walking stick more fiercely, making sure to rattle the brush loudly as she passed through to scare away bugs and animals.

Deadpool said, "We can enjoy the scenery better from back here."

Cherry shrugged and after only a few more minutes enduring Wade listing the number of times his head had been blown up in a microwave, the trees thinned and then disappeared, ending in a grassy clearing.

A dark building with sharp upward sloping corners stood at the far end of a park, full of flowering trees, throwing a thick fall carpet of red leaves over the green grass. A dirt path lined with row upon row of tiny bowing stone statues of smiling men covered in patches of moss led to the structure over the slight hill. Steam rose off a small hot spring lake with a simple wooden bridge linking the two stone banks.

As Cherry struggled to make out the square building on the top of the hill, surrounded by red trees and lit by dim round lanterns of varying bright colors, the massive herd of deer that they had spotted earlier pounded out of the tree line and filled the clearing. The deer slowed down and stopped, some eating grass, others lying down. Others wandered idly. Cherry heard even more deer in woods, trampling and running through the underbrush.

"What the fuck?!" Wade cried, his voice erupting obnoxiously in the peace of the colorful valley. Half of the deer herd turned to look at him, half poised to run from the loud threat. "We just walked through The Blair Witch Project and came out in that scene in Kill Bill where Lucy Lui gets her head chopped off. There's way more blood when somebody cuts the top of your skull off."

Leonardo stepped out of the trees and stared with wide eyes at the winding path of statues, leading towards the mysterious building, his face easing. He knelt down low and inspected one of the statues.

"Are these little Buddha statues or gods or something? I feel like we just teleported to Japan. What are we even doing here?" Cherry suddenly exploded at Leonardo, an uneasy bubble forming in her chest. "We don't have time for a spiritual retreat! I need to just figure this out on my own! Why don't you call me on your new phone when you're done!" Cherry turned to leave and Leonardo grabbed her wrist, then shook his head no, his face now intense with dissatisfaction.

"This is all your fault, Leonardo!" Deadpool said, waving a serrated knife at Leonardo as if he were a naughty child. "You got us lost! You should have just let me blast a route through the trees."

Cherry ignored the arguing and they walked up the path towards the building, Cherry and Leonardo silent, Deadpool railing at Leonardo's poor sense of direction, even though he had been the one giving them directions.

A warm vapor lifted off the hot spring lake as they crossed the bridge, their footsteps making a dull sound in the still night. Sakura sniffed the mellow air and sneezed. Leonardo laughed, rubbing her tiny head.

Deadpool said, "Now let me do the talking. I don't know why you two wanted to come along since it's obvious that I'm going to win a contest based on my oral skills. Although maybe you could keep up, sexy. I'm winking suggestively under my hood, by the way."

Leonardo scratched his head with confusion and then pointed at himself.

"That's a whole other book, pal," Deadpool said as he swatted at a moth as it were a buzzing bee. I wouldn't be so eager to get friendly with that girl if I were you. You know Connie Nervegas always kills you horribly every time you get laid in one of her stories. But then again maybe getting your tongue counts as some kind of foreshadowing for a future fuck. Like paying in advance."

Leonardo shook his head and then let go of Cherry's head to pull out his phone. He typed for a second.

Cherry's phone beeped with a text: _who is connie nervegas? do you know her? oral contest? :( i can't talk. But i'll try my best if it saves everybody. i feel like i've been here before. why do you have better oral skills than me? i give lots of speeches at home! stupid wade_

"Maybe she's another cosplayer. And he meant..." Cherry looked into Leonardo's pouting face, one of his hands distractedly holding his pained throat. "I'll tell you later."

Cherry fell back behind Leonardo, who calmly headed towards the dark pagoda as if he were heading to his childhood home. Stone animals snarled down from the corners of the roof and she stopped to smell some flowers draped over a small stone statue of a seated figure. Every inch of the exterior shined through the darkness with bright red and yellow paint. A small woman draped in an orange robe bowed in the doorway and asked, "Are you the champions?"

Leonardo stood back and looked at Cherry, biting his lip and furrowing his brow.

Deadpool said, "Well, I'm not a hero, but I'll gladly compete in your little jousting match. So what do we win? Money? Women? Women with money?"

"You will receive a gift that will help all life in the universe," the small woman said, smiling kindly at Wade.

"Guns?" Deadpool asked.

"He's a champion," Cherry said, pointing at Leonardo. "I speak for him because he can't talk, so if you have any business with him, tell it to me."

The woman glared at Cherry and then said to Leonardo, "No one has before dared to bring one of the dark vessels here. Come inside and we will begin."

Leonardo made a drinking gesture and then pointed down at Sakura, whose head lay against his chest, sleeping. The woman said, "Oh, this one is very young. Does it need milk? We have supplies for feeding the little ones in our own herd. Come with us and we will help you." Leonardo and the woman went inside, disappearing into the shadowy interior, spicy incense drifting after them.

Deadpool followed the woman inside, demanding venison tacos. Cherry lingered outside, reluctant to follow.

_So I only got to Deadpool here. I'll have another one coming up in the next chapter. I feel like this should be marked as a crossover, but I don't know how really. Because he's just a guest start to amuse myself. _


	11. Night

_Ever have one of those scenes in an outline where you go, "Wow, I really will be bored if I write that." That is usually a good indication that the reader will be even more bored reading it. I had a lot of these scenes lately, which explains the long delay in updating because I had such a hard time jumping over them. So I apologize if I put people to sleep._

A nun of Eros showed Cherry to a small wooden hut with dark paneled walls. A bed sat low on the ground against the wall and window covered with semi-transparent paper allowed lukewarm light into the room. Cherry said, "Thank you, ma'am. Where is Leonardo sleeping?"

The nun smiled politely and closed the door without another word.

Cherry dumped her backpack on the dirty floor and a spider scurried out from between the slats. "At one with nature, I guess," she muttered and sat down on the bed.

Then she heard Dragonborn, the third champion clomping down the stone stairs to the visitors huts and saying angrily to his housecarl Lydia, "Damn it, Lydia! Why did I take all these wooden plates and cabbages? I'll eat these cabbages if I get attacked for quick health but I'm dropping the plates. I thought you would wear the iron helmet I gave you instead of that hideous cultist mask. Come here! I need to trade some things with you."

Lydia sighed with degradation and said, "I am sworn to carry your burdens."

Dragonborn snapped, "Just shut up, bitch, and take my shit!"

They rattled through their belongings outside Cherry's front door for several minutes and finally left, leaving a pile of fur armor and wooden plates behind.

Cherry lay down and imagined her future as a respected Mayanologist, sleeping in grass huts near Palenque as she copied newly discovered transcriptions and helped the indigenous people rediscover their lost heritage. She moved away from the spider and then sat her backpack on top of it so that she didn't have to look at it any longer. She pulled out the sack of condoms and tossed them aside, wondering if they had a trashcan nearby.

She took off her jeans and threw them across the room into a heap and then unhooked her bra, maneuvering it off without removing the shirt and then tossed it lazily against the opposite wall. She slid under the thin blanket and stared at the cobweb covered beams overhead.

Should she leave? Leonardo needed her to communicate for him.

The nuns of Eros had served them a dinner of rice in a small room with a sunken square fire pit full of clean raked sand. A black tea kettle hung suspended from the ceiling and one of the older nuns worked the fire, preparing the meal. Leonardo knelt down on one of the cushions and then motioned for Cherry to sit next to him. She knelt on a cushion and let her heavy backpack fall with a loud thump. Leonardo had smiled apologetically to one of the nuns for her poor manners.

But when they served the rice, Leonardo pushed his bowl away and then sat at the fire with the elderly nun, her arms thin and papery, squatting at the hearth and poking diligently at the fire. He held out a hand, offering to help her and she said, "Thank you, young man. What is your name?"

She saw him trace in the sand with the fire poker.

The nun said, "Ah, Leonardo! So you have come to compete for the right to save us from Chaos and to fight Chaoskampf?"

Leonardo smiled and shrugged politely, then took two bowls full of rice and served Dragonborn and Deadpool.

Deadpool looked at his small bowl of rice and said, "This is just the first course, I hope. But if not, I'm full of gas station food."

"I'll take a health potion. Lydia doesn't need any food. I can't use any healing potions on her anyway," said Dragonborn as he stuffed several cabbages and wooden plates into his gigantic sack.

"Hey, what's Chaoskampf?" Cherry asked. "It's sounds important. Not that I care because I'm the 'dark one.' It sounds education and probably important for Leonardo to know." She picked at her rice, her stomach clenched too small to receive any food.

The elderly nun at the hearth passed another dish of rice to Leonardo and said, "Chaoskampf is the dragon of Chaos. It protects the vessel of Chaos from the champion who can destroy it. Sometimes the champion is a man and sometimes a woman, but for some reason, only the male champions have been remembered in history. There is a long memory here though of every champion ever chosen and so far they have succeeded. And if not, none of us would be here."

Cherry's heart beat a little faster and she saw a long serpent, swimming through the murky water in her mind. "Is the vessel of Chaos always female? Is there a way to get rid of it? Do you guys know the formula that lets her into the world through the vessel?"

Leonardo's expression burned suddenly with ignited distrust and he poked the fire with agitation sending a waft of soot towards the guests.

"We do not know and do not wish to know. The vessel accepts this darkness. They are hopeless and without caring for the world around them. Chaoskampf comes from an egg. That is all that I will tell you about this," the nun said. "You are welcome to stay and talk about other things." She gestured at Leonardo and said, "The girl needs her dinner, Leonardo."

Leonardo picked up the bowl and set it in front of Cherry without looking at her. He sat back down at the hearth, glaring into the fire.

She look at the grains of rice in her wooden bowl and counted them, the dragon swirling in her mind's eye, its own eyes blank and unseeing. "I killed someone today," she said loudly, talking over Deadpool.

"Oh, so what?" Deadpool said, lifting up his hood and dumping in his rice as if it were soup. His skin was pockmarked and scarred as if he were covered in chemical burns.

Leonardo craned his neck at Deadpool and then filled another bowl with rice and placed it in front of him.

"Oh, thanks," Deadpool said, accepting his second helping. "But big deal. I killed fifty guys this morning and they were in the future."

"I did it with my bare hands, I think!" Cherry said, her voice rising unintentionally. "I was angry that they hurt him. I know I destroy things when I'm upset. But it's never been heat and I've never hurt anyone. He was a Priest of Chaos and disgusting and I'm glad he's dead. Should I leave? Why are you letting me stay here? Why don't you just kill me instead of waiting around for me to lay a dragon egg or whatever? I've already killed somebody! That's just the start, isn't it?"

"Yeah, probably," Deadpool said. "So you're a pretty girl with super powers? What's your name again? Mary Sue?"

Dragonborn said, "I would kill you, but I'm still doing the 'Become Champion of Eros' quest. I get 1,000 gold from the Companions Guild if I succeed. But I'll activate the 'Kill Vessel of Chaos' quest later." He stuck his bowl of rice into his bag.

"Despair is a self determined path," the nun said to Cherry. "Strong desire causes strong suffering."

Leonardo blinked rapidly and then bowed to the nun. He left the room quickly, sliding the paneled door behind him.

Cherry said, "Well, I don't desire much. I don't suffer much. I don't care much. As far as things go, everything is the same big nothing."

"Hey, that's crazy! I think the same thing!" Deadpool said as he swallowed down his rice. "So if this whole Champion of Eros thing doesn't work out, I'll just find out how to become the Vessel of Chaos and ride that gravy train instead. Sounds badass."

The nun had shown Cherry to her guest hut, ignoring her questions about Leonardo and Sakura.

Cherry closed her eyes. Why did Leonardo leave while the nun spoke of desire and suffering? It seemed rude. She wondered if Deadpool or Dragonborn would kill her in her sleep. Neither one seemed trustworthy. But Blindragon would protect her... She watched its wake brush past the trees, its body clear. Now she sat still and the world disappeared along with the worry and despair and the vast nothing.

She felt a warm hand on her shoulder and opened her eyes. Blindragon disappeared and transformed into Leonardo's brown eyes, reddened and exhausted. "Hey, Leo..." she drawled stupid with sleep. "Where did you go? I know you want to lecture me because you think I said I know more than I told you. But I don't. I mean, if I know more, I don't know that I know it. So don't get too full of angst..."

But she stopped in mid-sentence as Leonardo carefully pulled the covers back and lay down beside her, then lay his head against her collar bone, curling up against her like a baby. She closed her eyes and kissed the top of his head. "Today was a rotten day huh?" she said. Cherry pushed the handles of his katanas as they tapped against her forehead and said, "It would be really sexy if the epic ninja warrior took off his dangerous weapons before he got into bed with me."

Leonardo laughed deep in his chest and sat up, his body already stiffening with oncoming sleep. He unbuckled his leather straps and placed the gear in a neat pile next to the bed, then slowly slipped off all his pads and unwrapped the bandages that bound his knuckles and wrists. Cherry wrinkled her nose and said, "Let's get you some new hand bandages. They're all grey and blood spotted. You do look tough, but it isn't very sanitary." She propped herself on her elbows, watching him remove his gear and her body fluttered, anticipating his warmth. "I'm glad you lost that stupid blue thing you wore on your face back at my mother's house. It made you look like a cartoon character," she said.

He finally removed his gear and lay back down against her, his arms around her ribcage like a child. Then he suddenly sat up and pulled out his phone, pounding out a hasty text.

Cherry saw her phone light up with a message and reached over, pulling it out of the top of her backpack and read: _i'll never say i love you again. or anything at all again._

She didn't answer and watched a spider crawl through a cobweb on the ceiling as Leonardo's breathing slowed against her chest. Cherry stroked his arm and listened to the crickets outside, absorbing the peace of the moment. But his eyelids twitched and one of his legs jerked suddenly against hers. His fingers moved as if grasping at something in his sleep and she realized that he must be having a nightmare, most likely about the Temple of Chaos, Hal Barton and the moment that the priest cut out his tongue. Maybe even when he saw her eagerly eating his tongue and slurping it down with his own blood.

Something rustled outside on the path and Leonardo sat up as if he had been wide awake, spun around and picked up his swords, his actions taking only a second. He leaned against the doorway, listening for a prowler.

Cherry sat up in her bed, trying not to breathe hard and listened.

"Damn it, Lydia! I told you to wait for me back in the cabin! Your sneak is so low that you got me caught by that mute Argonian and the nord woman! He has some really nice katanas I could sell at the thieves guild too! Well, let's try Deadpool's cabin then. I can't pick the lock if they're both awake." Then Dragonborn and Lydia crept slowly down the path, both crouching.

Leonardo opened his mouth and emitted a shapeless vocalization as he attempted to speak and then clamped his hand over his mouth with an expression of mortification.

"Hey, it's okay," she said, getting out of bed. Her bare legs prickled with goose bumps in the cool wind. The paper window didn't protect the cabin from spiders or pneumonia, she thought. She put a hand on his shoulder and as soon as she made contact with his skin, he left the cabin, his hand still over his mouth and headed towards the temple. She watched his figure blend gradually into the shadows and then glow slightly under the paper lanterns near the entrance as he disappeared inside, still covering his mouth.

* * *

Cherry sat in her cabin for another hour reading a textbook. She read the same paragraph over again and still didn't glean any information. Where was Leonardo? Did he have his own cabin? She wondered if she should look for him and imagined several gushy romantic scenarios that all began with her sliding into bed with him and ended in various embarrassingly carnal situations.

No, she should stay in her own cabin. If he had wanted to be with her, he would have stayed.

But he had climbed into bed with her without an invitation. Why couldn't she do the same thing? And he shouldn't be alone, having nightmares about people eating his tongue. She put her book aside and picked up her jeans, then threw them back on the floor, not caring if anyone saw her wearing nothing but panties. People saw her wearing less every night anyway.

She followed him to the temple, walking on the sides of her feet to avoid the tiny jagged rock fragments in the stone steps leading back up the slope. An owl sat on the great stone arch and flew away when she approached. A bat swooped in front of the paper lantern light as it plucked a bug out of the air.

The temple felt even more eerie in the dark of night. The fragrant ashes of the day's incense lingered and Cherry walked silently on the balls of her feet towards the sanctuary. There was no light except the moon shining through the open windows and nothing to illuminate but a rough hewn statue of a faceless god, holding out a hand to its worshippers. Leonardo spun in the middle of the room, grunting and sweating as he went through the motions of his katana exercises, slicing at imaginary enemies. He moved so quickly that Cherry marveled at the amount of time spent on his training even in his short lifespan and then congratulated herself on her stealth. She had successfully snuck up on a ninja.

Leonardo put his swords away and stood in the middle of the room breathing hard and then wiped at his face with the back of his hand. After a few minutes she realized that he was wiping away tears away with the sweat as he sniffed pathetically. Then he got down on his knees and sat at the god's feet for a few minutes. Cherry watched him and would have left, but realized that there was no way she could creep away without being heard this time.

Eventually, he reached out and took a hold of the god's hand to help himself up and stopped, gripping it. He sat there, half crouching, held on to its outstretched hand and then burst with a sob that echoed in the empty sanctuary and his chest heaved. Cherry's eyes misted as she watched and moved to take a step away, but the second she moved Leonardo stood and came towards her, not even attempting to hide his agonized crying. He put his hands on her shoulders and stared at the floor, hiccupping and then went away, back out the door. She followed him outside and watched him enter one of the other rugged cabins.

She went to bed alone, but didn't sleep.

_Yeah the Dragonborn character is me playing Skyrim and yelling constantly at Lydia._


	12. Champion of Eros

_This chapter caused me mental anguish and any readers I have will have probably noticed that it's taken me over a month to write._

_EDIT: Revised for more better grammar. I forgot to proofread a whole section. Sorry about that._

Cherry spent most of the morning in her bra and panties lying out on the grass near the hot spring getting some sun. She never spent any time outdoors and thought that she might as well take advantage of her excessive free time doing something constructive for work. She unfastened her bra top and left her bare back exposed to the comforting sun and happily calculated the days of her life lost to the sun's radiation in pursuit of a suntanned body to earn money in her youth. Hopefully, she could get some government medical assistance to pay for her future skin cancer treatments. But she might destroy the universe and then she wouldn't have to worry about it after all.

Cherry heard screeching and turned her head painfully to the side with an eye squinted open. "Ugh, Deadpool! It wasn't funny while I was in the bathroom and it isn't funny now!" At least twenty monkeys played in the hot spring a few feet away. A few reclined against the rock with arms spread out and eyes closed. Cherry thought they looked like a lot of the men she entertained at the club and wondered if any of her clients picked nits out of each others' hair. Would they tip for it?

Her phone rang with a text and her heart palpated pleasantly, hoping it was a saucy text from Leonardo, probably inside listening to a boring speech from the nuns about the nature of Eros and his responsibility to the world as a potential champion.

She blinked at the text a few times. Under the contact DAD came the text: Evelyn are you there?

Cherry shook her head and turned off her phone. Maybe she should sleep instead of tan. Could excessive radiation from the sun cause hallucinations? Probably not, but she'd pretend that it was possible.

The afternoon sun lulled her into a dull sleep. She wanted to kiss Leonardo and wondered if his lack of a tongue might make a proper kiss impossible now. He smelled like herbal tea... She wouldn't let Blindragon hurt him. Blindragon answers to her. He answers to Chaos and you aren't anything but a container that didn't care enough to fight me off. Well either way, she couldn't keep him safe. Blindragon can smell his tea scent, even if he can't see. Why did Dad text her now? Couldn't he see she was busy? Dad would like Leonardo after he met him. Leonardo would smile politely and Dad would tease. Cherry left Dad's flannel shirt back at the dorm.

Then she woke up suddenly as she felt her bra top yanked out from underneath her chest. A monkey chirped and scurried away up the bank and met Dragonborn, who lunged at the monkey. The bra flew through the air and Dragonborn caught it in his hand and then stuffed it into his bag.

Cherry spent the next fifteen minutes running up and down the bank in nothing but panties, screaming at Dragonborn to give her back her bra. Dragonborn repeated that he needed to sell it at the thieves guild to buy more invisibility potions and then dumped a pile of large grey bones on the ground, claiming that dragon bones weighed him down too much and he had nowhere to store them and that he could just fight another dragon if he wanted more.

Finally, she put on the shirt that she had abandoned on the bank and headed towards the temple to find Leonardo. A nun rang an ancient metal bell, announcing lunch. The mellow tone echoed across the grass and a herd of deer rumbled down the hill and into the woods.

Cherry had never had so much rice in her life. Today they enjoyed a small bowel of vegetables and Dragonborn again tossed the whole dish into his bag. Again Leonardo offered his bowl of rice to Deadpool, who nearly swallowed it whole. As Dragonborn left with Lydia, she stumbled into Deadpool and then said, "I don't know whether to kill it or to pet it."

"Pet it, sweet cheeks," Deadpool said and then made kissy sounds under his hood.

Cherry lingered after Leonardo and the nuns had cleaned up the lunch dishes. He took a bowl of rice and glanced in either direction, then took a pair of chopsticks and put a clump in his mouth. Cherry watched him chew and then eventually gag, spitting it back into the bowl. He put it aside and then carried the dirty dishes out of the room towards the kitchen.

* * *

How could she be so stupid? Leonardo couldn't eat solid food without a tongue to push it back in his mouth without choking. His poor little ninja alien stomach must be empty and in pain. Cherry grabbed his bowl of abandoned rice and ran outside after Dragonborn and found him out by the hot spring picking flowers and catching butterflies and tossing them all into his sack. She ran panting down the hill towards him with the bowl of rice in her hand and said, "Dragonborn! I know you like to trade! Why don't you give me a mortar and pestle in exchange for that bra you already took."

"I looted that so I'm not trading for it. What else do you have? Do you have any dragon bones? I need some. I was overweight and had to dump them a while back." Dragonborn yelled, "Fus Roh Da!" and several monkeys flew across the lake and landed dead on the other bank.

Cherry found the pile of dragon bones that Dragonborn had previously discarded and handed them over. "Okay, I found some dragon bones." She dragged the heap of bones across the ground and assumed that it weighed at least thirty pounds.

"You found some!" Dragonborn said and then fished out a mortar and pestle. "Those are antiques from Tamriel. Skyrim introduced a different potion making system, so it's obsolete. Ha! Sucker!" He ran around the lake and skinned the monkeys with his bare hands and then tossed the skins into his bag. "Damn it, Lydia! Stop running around bodies of water! You can't swim like me? Why are you wearing that fucking glass armor when you have really high heavy armor skills? I'm going to send you to the glue factory!"

Lydia trotted behind him and said, "It will be done, my thane!"

"Suck up!" Dragonborn said and they crouched away towards their cabin.

Cherry ground up the rice with some water in the mortar and pestle until it looked smooth enough for a man with no tongue to swallow easily and then went back to the temple to find Leonardo.

He sat in the empty hearth room staring at the fire and she heard his stomach growl audibly as she approached. She sat next to him and offered him the bowl of rice porridge. "You look and sound hungry," she said.

He took the bowl gently and then took a tentative bite with the chopsticks and swallowed it easily.

"Hey, there you go! I'm going to tell those nuns to cream your food." Cherry went to the kitchen and demanded that the champion Leonardo have all his food creamed because he was a brave warrior who had lost his tongue in battle and tried to make it sound like having no tongue was sexy and noble.

She went back to the hearth and sat next to him as he ate, staring at the opposite wall through the whole meal. As he put the bowl on the edge of hearth, just out of reach of the cinders, he rubbed one of his eyes and then leaned over and kissed cheek so quickly that she wondered if she imagined it. Then he bowed his head to her and left the temple.

* * *

Cherry spent the next two hours wandering around the temple looking for Leonardo. Had he been crying while he ate his rice? He could have texted her if he didn't like it. He didn't need to choke it down and then kiss her face and leave. Maybe he was grateful though. Men didn't usually kiss a girl out of frustration.

The orange sun warmed the wooden floor as it shined through the open scrollwork windows and Cherry looked into the setting sun as it fell beyond the tree line and the sky greyed. It all might end. A sunset was nothing but matter and energy anyway and if it ended, then it would just coalesce into something new. It didn't matter. Children were born with such regularity that it almost made life meaningless.

As her eyes wandered the distant black tree line, she noticed a small footpath lined with small praying statues leading into the woods. It wasn't the same path they'd used to find the temple because that path lay on the opposite side of the yard. Cherry listened and didn't hear anything except Lydia muttering, "I have never seen anything quite like that..." as she stood alone near the foot path, holding Dragonborn's magical sack.

Cherry ran out of the temple and plodded down the grass to Lydia as the shadows darkened around them by the minute. "Lydia! What's in there? Did Leonardo go in there?"

Lydia looked down the path and shrugged, then pointed a few feet down that path to a stony cave opening surrounded by green vines. Cherry squinted at the cave in the moonlight and asked, "So they went in there? What is it that? A cave?"

Lydia said, "Hey, look, it's a cave. I wonder what's inside."

Cherry rolled her eyes and said, "Yeah, Lydia. I just said that. Get the banana out of your ear. It looks like a natural feature to me. Want to join me on an adventure, Lydia?" Cherry asked, and did a funny dance like a leprechaun.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Lydia said and shook her head no, her hands on her iron clad hips.

"Fine. I'll go alone and take all the glory like Deborah in the Bible!" Cherry said as she went down the dark footpath alone, past the little stone men. She imagined them all sneering suddenly, baring pointy teeth and chewing her ankles and wondered if she could sell a horror screenplay based on the idea.

As Cherry neared the entrance of the cave, she stooped down low and felt bats whizzing above her head. She sat down in a squat with her hands over her head and said to herself, "You are not a sissy! You are an action hero! Just don't eat your best friend's tongue this time! You can do this! Bats can't hurt you. They're good for the environment and cute. Cute little batties..." And then she shrieked as one nearly landed in her hair.

A soothing woman's voice echoed from the cave, saying, "...and it is the duty of the champion to protect the earth from the consumption of Chaos at all costs."

"So can I just Fus Roh Dah this chick to death as per my plan?" Dragonborn asked. "Or that dude that's also a Chaos entity now? Oh, Leonardo doesn't like that idea. Do you want to explain why you don't like the idea of me killing your evil girlfriend, Leonardo?" Dragonborn laughed hysterically.

"He doesn't have a tongue," Deadpool muttered. "It isn't nice to mock people who are disabled."

Cherry scratched her head in astonishment at Deadpool's generosity.

"He's ugly and short and green. You can mock him about that," Deadpool added.

The woman said, "You are not focusing on my words. These pictures drawn on this wall show us the first battle of the Champion of Eros against the first Chaoskampf, the Dragon of Chaos. The unfortunate who is polluted with Chaos will attempt to bring this Dragon to life to protect them from the Champion so that they may destroy the universe without his or her interference."

Deadpool said, "So we have to go through the dragon to get to kill Cherry? Why don't we just whack her right away? That sounds like a better plan to me! Put your fist down, Leo! I just defended you!"

"The Champion must do anything in their capacity to maintain balance between the Void and Creation. They push and pull like the tides. Eros will listen to your pleas and appeals tomorrow evening at dusk." The woman's footsteps echoed in the darkness and Cherry scurried back out of the mouth of the cave, pursued by a flock of swooping bats and hid behind a bush, her jeans sticking to a briar.

A baldheaded nun dressed in orange robes walked silently in the underbrush on bare feet towards the temple, her hands held calmly together as if in thought. She looked up at the stars and paused, then said, "Hello, Bringer of Chaos, hiding incompetently behind a bush. It is a beautiful night, is it not?"

"I've seen stars before. Meh," Cherry said, not stepping out from behind the bush. "They're just balls of heat and gas. You guys are going to cream Leonardo's food from now on right? If you don't, I'll come back in the kitchen and... I don't know... file a complaint with the owner or something."

The nun smiled and bowed silently, then walked up the path. She heard Lydia say to her, "Skyrim belongs to the Nords!"

The nun sighed and said, "I pity you, Lydia."

Next, Deadpool and Dragonborn left the cave. Deadpool pulled out a gun and shot a bat, which fell dead at his feet in a pile of leaves.

Dragonborn said, "That's lame! Watch this!" He shouted, "Fus Roh Da!" and a whole flock of bats fell at his feet. "Now help me pull off the wings. I can sell them in Rorikstead."

"I'll leave the bat skinning to you, pal," Deadpool said. "Well, I'm going to bed. Vaya con dios!"

She watched Deadpool wander away down the path. Then Dragonborn snatched up all the statues lining the path and shoved them in his bag. He tried to walk, but the bag was too heavy and he pulled out the statues, one at a time and attempted to walk again, until he'd thrown out three of them and could keep going. She heard Lydia say, "Honored to see you, my Thane."

"Hey, I didn't tell you to wait, Lydia. I wanted you to follow me. What's up with that? Whatever. Come on." Dragonborn and Lydia headed towards the temple.

Cherry waited at least ten minutes for Leonardo, but he didn't leave the cave. She took a few steps to follow him, but realized that he probably wanted to be alone. If he wanted to see her, he would find her.

* * *

Cherry spent the rest of the day soaking in the hot spring and swatting monkeys off her lap, using her acquired skills swatting men at work to her advantage. He left the sanctuary of the cave after an hour or so and went to the temple, walking as though carrying hundreds of pounds of bricks on his back.

Later, she followed Leonardo with her eyes up and down the hill as he trailed behind the nuns like a round shouldered and silent puppy, lifting and toting things and helping them plant in the garden behind the temple. But every time he passed by within eyesight, he stared at her. She checked her hair in the hot spring after the third incident of staring to ensure that her hair wasn't a crazy mess.

She closed her eyes for a second and then grabbed her phone off the dry bank and stared at the text from DAD. She sent a response: _someone there?_

Maybe someone got her dad's old phone and could see her listed as a contact. That must be it. She decided not to tell Leonardo and worry him.

Cherry picked up a stick and drew in the wet sand over the bank. A long body and a long snouted head and x's for eyes. She wrote the word BLINDRAGON over the sketch.

Then Leonardo and Sakura headed down the bank and Cherry hastily wiped out her drawing. Sakura stumbled towards the water on bony eager legs and Leonardo steadied her with one hand, a baby bottle full of milk in his other hand. Leonardo's eyes connected with Cherry and he froze with a hand on Sakura's head and didn't pull his hand back for a full ten seconds. Sakura finally abandoned him and run down to the bank to have a drink.

Cherry said, "Come and join me! Just shove these pervert monkeys aside. They keep trying to frisk me."

But Leonardo shook his head no and then held the baby bottle out to Sakura. Cherry's heart dripped into a molten puddle as she watched Leonardo bottle feed tiny Sakura. Alien men bottle feeding small animals were clearly the sexiest men in existence. Sakura slurped down the milk and then bleated at Leonardo in mild distress. He shrugged at her and then picked her up and placed her over his shoulder, patting her back.

"Are you burping that deer?" Cherry asked, smiling almost painfully.

He shook his head vigorously and sat Sakura back on her feet.

"Come over here and see me," Cherry said, leaning back against the rocks with her chest over the level of the water so that he could see everything through her wet shirt. Not that he hadn't seen it all already, but she knew the power to suggestion.

He looked directly at her intended target for a few seconds and then shook his head as if it were full of water. Leonardo pointed at her and then at himself. No, you come to me, he indicated.

"But you're not even in the water. It's sexier over here at this end," she said and dipped her hand into the water, letting it drip onto her chest.

Leonardo walked along the bank within her eyesight and then removed all his gear and sat on the edge of the bank with eyes closed in meditation.

"Hey, that's lame! No meditating! Get in here!" Cherry said and then gasped as a monkey sat on her lap.

Leonardo laughed and then huffed angrily as another monkey stole Sakura's baby bottle and scampered up a tree. He followed it deftly up the branches, blending into the foliage and then jumped back into the grass, bottle in hand.

"You just out climbed a monkey," Cherry said. "Now come over here and I'll give you a reward."

Leonardo stretched and pretended he didn't hear her. Then he slid into the water and drifted across the hot spring, finally settling directly across from her and spread his arms out and reclined against the stone bank. Then he again pointed at Cherry and then to himself.

Cherry smiled and then leaned back in the water to wet her hair and stretched her arms in the air so that he could see the long curve of her body. She glanced back at her target and found him staring shamelessly and then affected a yawn and rubbed the back of his neck after realizing he had been caught in mid-ogle.

"Come here," she said. "It's warmer over here with me."

Her prey continued to lazily soak in the warm water and Cherry spent several minutes brainlessly watching the steam rise off his toned body as he splashed water on his face. Then he met her eyes and smiled and gestured at her again.

"Fine! If it's that important that I play your petty little game!" Cherry said and slowly floated out towards him across the hot spring.

He laughed and held out his arms as she came nearer and Cherry swam directly into him, putting either leg across his lap. "So you wanted something?" she asked.

Cherry felt his strong legs shift under her weight and he leaned back, smirking. She put a hand on his shoulder and grazed her fingers over his hot skin. If the lake boiled at that moment, Cherry wouldn't have noticed because Leonardo put both hands around her waist under the water and her whole body lit up with fire. His eyes softened and she knew he wanted to lean in for a kiss. She tipped her head and just as their lips made contact and she enjoyed his skin passing gently against her lips, she flicked at his lip with her tongue and he immediately pulled away, turning his head, eyes wide.

Cherry's heart exploded with guilt and she sighed. What could she say? His skin had been smooth when she first met him and now it was full of partially closed gashes, most still full of stitches. Normally, she would have passed out at the sight of that many stitches, but she didn't notice them anymore. The cuts must still hurt, but he never flinched or acknowledged any pain. "These aren't healing very well. Maybe the mineral water will help," she said, as she ran her fingers over a wound.

Leonardo shrugged and still looked away, water dripping from his jaw line.

Instead she put her hand on his cheek and then felt all over his face with her fingertips. Leonardo watched her curiously and then his body relaxed. He closed his eyes and sighed. Cherry leaned in and kissed his throat and then down the side of his neck.

"Hey, can I join or is this a private party?" asked an annoying and familiar voice. Then a wave his Cherry in the back as Leonardo immediately put both arms around her, turning her away from the brunt of the rushing hot water. "You know, you shouldn't get mad if you make out in public. Do it in private if you don't want to be interrupted."

Cherry glanced over Leonardo's shoulder and saw Deadpool, stretched out in the hot spring. He wore nothing but a pink Speedo and his red Spandex mask. Cherry gagged a little at his rotted flesh, boiling in the water. "Ugh! Deadpool! Get lost!" she shouted over Leonardo's shoulder.

"Hey, let's have a threesome! I could do all the tongue work for you, Leo. You can dress up like Bea Arthur and you can dress up like a chimichanga. It'll be wicked sexy." Deadpool picked up a monkey, forced it to sit on his lap and then petted it so hard that its skin pulled back from over its eyeballs and it squealed. "Hey, I know. I could cut off my tongue and Leonardo could borrow it! Just give it back, you know!"

Leonardo stood up suddenly and Cherry gasped as she rose out of the water, with Leonardo's arms supporting her. He carried her out of the water, picked up her phone with his free hand on the bank and then walked soaking wet. He carried Cherry in his arms, growling like an angry dog all the way to Cherry's cabin, while Sakura frolicked happily behind him. "Thanks, Angry-Prince-Charming," Cherry said, blushing with slight embarrassment at the overly dramatic act of chivalry.

He set her on her feet and then rubbed the back of his neck and gestured a dramatic apology.

"Can I spend the night with you?" she blurted out, rather emotionally. "Dragonborn or Deadpool might carry me off and lock me up somewhere or kill me if I win. I think I'm supposed to prove that I want to save humanity by willingly going with them as a hostage if they win. So we probably won't see each other after tonight."

Leonardo nodded and then smiled awkwardly. He gestured into her cabin and then followed her inside, carrying little Sakura.

He held up a finger for her to wait and she watched him run like a gazelle down the hill towards his own cabin. He went inside and came back a few minutes later with an armful of paper and writing supplies.

Cherry watched him fan out pages on the floor in a tile and she said, "Oh, so you've been practicing your Japanese writing! Good idea. I wish I could help with that. I know some Aztec writing, but I don't think you're into that."

She watched him spread a sheet of plain paper on the floor and then put a pot of black ink and a paint brush beside it. Leonardo filled the page with a few elegant Japanese characters and he put the paper aside to dry.

She felt her heart beating fast, amazed with everything he did. His lips were very warm. Stupid Wade Wilson!

Leonardo searched the stacks of writing paper and then hissed between his teeth, throwing his hands up in frustration.

"What's the matter?" she asked. "Oh, it looks like you ran out of clean paper. Maybe the nuns have more. You probably shouldn't use up all their paper supply though. Who knows where they get it, since they live in a magical Buddhist Temple that doesn't really exist. I doubt they get to Wal-Mart very often."

He looked from the brush in his hand to the pot of ink and then gestured with his free hand and pointed at the bed.

"What? You're going to... paint the bed...?" she asked tentatively.

He shook his head no and pointed at Cherry.

"Oh, you want to paint me?" Cherry asked. "Well, how does that work?"

Leonardo stared at her, biting his lip.

"Or you don't want to paint me and I sound like Google Translate? Hey! We should start learning sign language! My phone is nearly dead, so we'll start that after we leave. Or you can do it on your own if I don't go with you," she said and put her hands in her pockets and obediently sat down on the bed. She had no clue what he wanted, but she was prepared to do whatever he asked on her last night with him.

Leonardo put the brush down in the pot of ink and knelt down in front of her, then cautiously reached down to her sides and took a hold of the hem of her shirt. He hesitated before giving it a tug.

"You're fine," she said as she lifted her arms above her head.

He pulled off her shirt and then twitched a finger in the air in a circle.

Cherry turned around and faced the wall, fighting off a nervous giggle. "You're being really mysterious, Ninja Boy."

Leonardo ran his hand down her back once and then lifted her hair over her shoulder. The bed moved as he knelt behind her. She frantically wondered if she should bring up the bag full of condoms and contraceptives in her backpack as she held her arms over her bare breasts. "Dragonborn stole my bra," she said, randomly searching for conversation.

He laughed and then she felt something light and cold on her skin. Leonardo was painting on her back with the ink and brush. "Do you take lessons in sexy, precious?" she asked, deciding to give up the apathetic pretense and admit it.

He patted her arm and she felt the cool brush sweeping across her skin. After ten minutes, she heard him fumble with his phone and the room lit up as his phone took a picture.

"Are we done then?" she asked and turned around to face him.

Leonardo seemed pleased with himself. His eyes immediately went to her chest and then up at the ceiling. He blindly offered her the phone.

A photograph of Cherry's bare back covered in Japanese calligraphy filled his phone screen. She hurriedly emailed it to herself and then asked, "Can you type out what it says in English? I can't read any of this. If you don't, I could walk topless to the temple and ask a nun to interpret it for me and say sexy Leonardo painted on me and I need to know what it says." She handed the phone back to him. "I'm going to wait for this to dry before I put my shirt on and shield you from my nudity. You should totally take a picture of it so you can see it when I'm gone."

He shook his head no and then rolled his eyes dramatically and sighed. She waited as he typed into his phone and then held it up and took several pictures of her face at close range. He shyly indicated that he had taken pictures of her eyes and then offered her the phone.

Cherry put her shirt back on and looked down at the text. It read: Cherries bloom in spring/a blade breaks on soft silence/the blossom closes.

"Wow, that's beautiful. Did you write that? I couldn't write a poem if my life depended on it. If I wrote a poem it would be an epic about a dragon. You know, like Beowulf. A strong epic warrior fighting a dragon. The warrior should totally be a girl too. It would be like that blonde chick on Game of Thrones who's always naked, except she would slay the dragons instead of keeping them as pets. I'm totally going to house train this dragon that I'm going to give birth to and send it to a charter school." She read the lines over again, trying to commit them to memory and then quickly emailed it to herself instead. Maybe she could read the lines to herself as Deadpool or Dragonborn killed her tomorrow.

Leonardo pretended he didn't hear her talk flippantly about Chaoskampf and lay down on the bed next to her. She turned off his phone and curled up against him, lying against his chest until morning.

* * *

Cherry stood near the temple steps with Leonardo as they waited for the nuns to assemble and hear their arguments as the sun set. He looked at the ground, deep in thought about the hopeless task ahead of him. She bounced on the balls of her feet, attempting to shake off the anxiety, and said, "This reminds me of that time that I missed a final exam." She took Leonardo's hand and he didn't move or indicate that he noticed in any way. "My professor got on a flight to Abu Dhabi as soon as he finished giving the test. So that night I made a profile for and decided to be a trophy wife. I took all my tips from that night and went to Central Park and sat under a bridge because I decided that I would either be a bum living under a bridge or a trophy wife. So either I would invest all my money and get boob implants to land a rich old guy or else I would live with the winos. I drank a whole bottle of wine and threw all my money into a burning barrel and kept going, "Final exams? Psssht! I don't need those! I'm going to be a troll under a bridge! Or a trophy wife! My professor passed me, by some miracle, and I was always kind of pissed because I think he did it because he liked how I looked. He asked me to do private instruction at his house once. That means fuck for a grade. Obviously, I didn't do it, but I always thought it meant that he thought I owed him one." She wrung his sweaty hand nervously in hers and then said, almost hysterically, "Let's go have sex in my cabin! I have a million condoms and lube! Some of the condoms are flavored! I think I'm going to puke!"

Leonardo sighed and nodded slightly, as if he hadn't listened at all. Either he hadn't noticed the shameless demand for sex or else she had totally misjudged his attraction to her.

Deadpool followed a nun out of the temple saying, "Come on! You can't give me a little hint? I want to know what super power I get so I can text the Avengers and rub it in their faces! I want to find Punisher and give him a magical noogie or something."

"If you must know..." the nun said, sighing deeply as if Wade were a fly she couldn't swat successfully, "...You will gain the ability to heal at will when damaged by Chaotic energy."

Deadpool said, "What?! You're just giving me a healing ability? I already have that and yours is lamer than mine! I'm going to pack a monkey to give to Blind Al as a pet and then I'm out of here! I turned down I'll call him Zbornak!" Deadpool stormed off towards the hot spring and chased monkeys up and down the bank.

"Hey, I guess that lowers the odds. I should just give my victory speech now or is Leonardo ready to give a speech?" Dragonborn asked and then slapped his armored knee as he laughed.

Lydia leered at Leonardo and said, "You don't belong here!" Leonardo scowled in return.

"Well, neither do you, bitch!" Cherry said in nonsensical defense.

Dragonborn pulled out a scroll from his bag and let it unfurl to the ground. He said, "Okay, I've prepared a speech and Lydia timed me at three hours. I'll cut out my origin story and back story relating to the Stormcloak family and their various debated genealogies."

"Ah, don't do that!" Lydia cried and put her hands over her ears dramatically.

"Relax, Lydia. I cut out at least half of it. I'm only going to talk about why I'm more worthy and why both Deadpool and Leonardo are both totally inadequate and how I get 1,000 gold from the assassin's guild if I kill Cherry without anyone seeing it happen. Oops! I totally didn't say that!" Dragonborn pulled his helmet visor over his eyes.

Cherry shook involuntarily and Leonardo's grip on her hand tightened. He took a deep breath and let go of her hand, leaving moist heat in her palm. Leonardo bowed to the nun silently and got to his knees, bowing low before the nun. He pulled his katanas and lay them both on the grown in front of him and hung his head.

"Nice speech," Dragonborn said. "You got right to the point, letting her know that you're totally inadequate here. Let me begin…"

Leonardo closed his eyes, as if he'd just been stabbed.

"Don't talk to him like that!" she said under breath and then realized with internal pain that Dragonborn will win.

Good Leonardo, so worthy, noble and many other positive words that should couldn't list. And he lost because he couldn't talk. Didn't Eros care about the man behind the words? At least Chaos seemed to choose her servants wisely, for her own purposes.

The nun said to Dragonborn, "You have not won this honor until you Eros is assured of your worth. Please proceed." She gave him a small bow and a weak smile, as if smiling at cocky warriors was part of her job description.

The Dragonborn took a step forward and said, "I am the Dragonborn! I was chosen by those Greybeard monks who live on top of that mountain where that polar bear killed me over and over and I forgot to save and I kept having start all the way at the fucking bottom of the mountain every time because it kept jumping out in different places and knocking me off the mountain. After I did that sneak exploit for hours, you know, stabbing them all with a dagger while crouching, so that I could get my sneak levels really high, they told me that I'm the chosen Dragonborn. I even still have that useless Dragon book that I was spawned with back when I escaped the chopping block! I didn't even sell it, even though it was worth ten gold or something. I haven't read it yet. I think you should make me the Champion of Eros because it's part of my storyline. I mean, Dragonborn is part of my name! I don't really understand my powers. I think I absorb dragon souls and turn them into spells or something. They're a pain to cast though because I have a hard time remembering how to use the short cut keys to equip them and then you have to learn them in three parts. I tried using the Kinect so I could just shout them verbally, but the machine didn't understand me at all. I've found the main dragon shout to mostly be helpful at knocking Lydia out of doorways when she gets stuck or killing animals that I'm chasing. But anyway, this girl is evil and must be stopped. I plan to do that by killing her and looting her body. I have high enough sneak skill where I was able to look at what she's carrying and I think I'm going to take everything except all the condoms. So I think it's just smart business sense for Eros to choose me. I'm already trained in killing dragons and they seem to be attracted to me magnetically. Every time I go to my house a frickin' dragon shows up and then useless Lydia just hops around and yells at it. Also, I'm part of the Dark Brotherhood so I have no reservations about killing Cherry, even though she's technically sort of an innocent. Plus, I've already downloaded a lot of hacks to help me defeat Blindragon by typing in a cheat so that I can randomly find Frodo dead with the one ring, loot his body and take the ring and then have invisibility all the time. So I'm going to save the world that way. Thank you for listening." Dragonborn stepped back and cleared his throat.

Lydia applauded and said, "What's next? Carnivorous rabbits?"

Leonardo glanced up at Lydia and opened his mouth, as if about to lecture her. He shut his mouth and looked back at the ground.

"I agree that it was long and verbose, Lydia," Dragonborn said, "But so are all great works of literature."

Suddenly, Deadpool ran hysterically into their midst, waving a dead monkey above his head and yelling, "No! I can't hear all this exposition without giving a speech! I know it's pointless! But I can't stand the idea of you guys having a power that I don't! Plus, I just want to talk about myself. And my monkey died."

The nun said, "You cannot now participate again as a competitor."

"Can I still give a speech?" Deadpool asked. "You can't see it, but I'm frowning under my mask."

"Shut your chimichanga-hole, Wade!" Dragonborn said. "I got this thing locked up!"

Deadpool said, "Step off, bitch! It's my turn!"

The nun sighed and said, "I cannot stop you from giving a speech, I suppose. Continue, Wade Wilson."

"Where do I start…?" Deadpool asked himself, finger on his chin. "I should start with my back-story or I would if it stayed the same long enough for me to really know what it is. I think that I'm worthy of this healing power because I already have it. I think it shows that I'm the most worthy because I don't need it. I just want it because I don't want them to have it. I mean, Wolverine already makes me feel not-so-special. And I totally wanted to make out with the Chaos apocalypse evil girl, but she's too into this big green frog thing to give me any play. But seriously, I've totally boned Death, so I think I should be the one to fight her. Is Chaos like death? What is Chaos anyway? I hear you guys talk about it, but I'm still not clear on what it actually is. I don't have a very clear idea on it and I totally blame Connie Nervegas for that. How hard can it be to fight a dragon? Why are we fighting a dragon again? I haven't seen a dragon so far in this story. And why am I in it like nine chapters in? I should have been on the first page. I'm much more heroic than Leonardo. I wasn't cast as the lead in this story because I was too busy shooting my new movie, so I turned it down. I'm not going to lie; I'll probably kill Cherry as soon as we're out of sight. I'd keep her around, but she isn't very interesting and she'll take up all the room I need in the car for my fast food wrappers and beer cans. Oh, I totally have a cute daughter. That humanizes me and you should pick me because I made a cute kid. I don't know how it happened, but I'm taking credit for it. I had Blind Al write me a letter of recommendation, but mostly she bitched that I'm a slob and never wash dishes and then a monkey ate it. I bet it was this one that I killed." Deadpool held the dead monkey above his head. "I could cut it open and look if you want. I've had some bad experiences with monkey assassins, so I ask them all if they're tracking me and if they don't answer, I'll kill them. They just refuse to answer me! So pick me! Because you I've killed the most shit around here between the three of us and I can't die. I mean, I can't die better than your usual heroes. Wow, I nearly made a whole page." Deadpool gestured at Leonardo and said, "You're next pal. Knock us dead!"

Leonardo stood up and then silently bowed at the nun and said nothing, his swords still on the ground at his feet.

Cherry's eyes burned. If Dragonborn or Deadpool killed her, then at least the universe survived. But Leonardo will live the rest of his life as a mute. Her lungs turned to lead and she sobbed out loud. "Can he at least come with us?" she asked the nun, her throat full of tears.

"I do not think that would be wise," the nun said. "It cannot be prevented, but I must ask what purpose will it serve?"

"Well, he's my friend! I don't want to die without him!" she said, and then wiped her hot cheeks with her bare arm. "This isn't fair! How can those two guys beat him if this is based on worth? This is the stupidest thing ever and we should just leave! But he's too good to just leave!"

The ground moved under her feet and a timber in the temple roof creaked. The monkeys shrieked and jumped out of the lake. Cherry could feel the deer herd thundering into the clearing. Sakura tripped down the stairs to Leonardo's feet and bleated for help.

"You can't take somebody away from me again like this!" she shouted at the nun and watched spider web cracks gape under feet. The wood of the temple walls splintered and paint chips flaked away from the walls. All of the paper lanterns shredded into confetti and burst in the air.

"What's going on?" Deadpool asked, shrugging as he stepped away from the swirling tumult of air and debris surrounding Cherry. "Don't rip my suit."

Why shouldn't she just destroy this place? She should find the Orphic Egg and watch Blindragon arise. Then it could eat all of them while the atmosphere incinerated and the world disintegrated or one or the other or both at the same time. Break everything down until there was nothing but energy. No father and no Leonardo and none of these rules.

Leonardo walked down the hill a few paces. Maybe he had decided to cut his losses and leave before she tore his molecules apart. Deadpool carried Sakura far away from the cloud of dust and rumbling earth under Cherry's feet and patted her head as she struggled to escape. "Better get away from that crazy chick. Don't mind my smell."

But Leonardo cut a blossoming stem covered in pink flowers from a tree and then approached Cherry, walking straight past the earth and sharp rocks and wood splinters and held the flower out to her.

She shouldn't destroy the little flower, only half opened and she felt bits of debris stinging her face and swirling around her like a noisy monsoon of destruction and the ground rumbled as if a train roared on a track nearby. "Please don't leave! I don't care if I die!" she cried to Leonardo. "Just stay or kill me yourself!"

He tucked the flower in her hair and dried the muddy tears off her cheeks, then put his arms around her and held her.

Cherry clung to him and felt his warm body against hers, willing herself to block out the imaginary future path that plodded alone into the woods without him. It ended on the sharp end of a sword or the blast of gunfire.

But Leonardo wouldn't let that happen. The ground went silent and the cloud cleared. "I'm a drama queen, aren't I?" she said in his ear.

"Okay, let's go, Cherry," Dragonborn said and grabbed her by the arm, wrenching her body away from Leonardo.

But Leonardo held her around the waist and stuck out his foot, catching Dragonborn behind the knee and sent him stumbling. He released Cherry's arm and said, "Rats! I need to invest in light armor. You've proven that you're too dangerous. Now come with me and I'll make it quick. Obviously, I won because Deadpool gave up and Leonardo didn't even talk. So come on."

Leonardo pushed him roughly away, and snarled.

The nun held her hands in the air, trying to quiet them. "You will all be quiet while the Icon of Eros is consulted and once we have received the word, we will inform you of his decision." The nun watched Cherry as if she might implode at any minute. "You can get on your way with the Chaotic One as soon as we pronounce the decision."

"Where are your things so that I can loot them after you're dead?" Dragonborn asked, looking around the ground for Cherry's backpack.

But Leonardo gasped and put both his hands around his throat, his face struck with shock or pain.

Lydia grabbed Cherry's wrist and flung her at Dragonborn and she bounced off of his breastplate like a ragdoll.

"Are you okay?" Cherry asked Leonardo as Dragonborn manhandled her.

Deadpool set Sakura on the ground, who ran straight to Leonardo and wagged her tail. Deadpool said, "Do you need water or something, Leo? I bet you swallowed some dust when Cherry nearly blew us all up with her brain." He pulled a flask off his utility belt and said, "It's full of whiskey, but it'll hit the spot."

Cherry stumbled behind Dragonborn as he pulled her roughly towards the edge of the woods. "I bet this will only take one arrow. Lydia, use one of your glass arrows. Nevermind. I'll just Fus Roh Dah her until she goes limp." He tossed her on the ground and she lay there, staring at the brown soil pressed against her cheek.

Whatever.

She heard Dragonborn take a few steps in the crunching leaves and then…

"STOP!"

She lay there for a few seconds, wondering why the new voice sounded familiar.

The new voice said, "Get away from her or I will kill you and I am not being dramatic." She heard cold metal slicing against metal.

Leonardo stood over her, one of his katanas at Dragonborn's throat. He said, "Perhaps you should work on your perception skills, friend. Keep your mouth shut or you will be the one without a tongue."

She sat up and said, "What happened?! How can you talk?!"

Dragonborn sneered and said, "So it was a ruse! You could talk all along! It was a trick to earn our trust! So you gave your speech after I hauled her out of there, didn't you? I say that's cheating and I'm going to go back to the nuns and make them reverse this!" He took a step forward, as if about to storm off towards the temple and then waited for Lydia to run around in circles before she followed him.

Leonardo didn't move and held his arm out straight at his neck. "I didn't cheat. I didn't say a word. I guess Eros values actions over words, Dragonborn." He glanced sideways at Cherry and said, "Stand up and get behind me. If Wade does anything obnoxious I will not hesitate to cut his head off and, no, I won't sew it back on for you."

"Aw, man!" Deadpool said, crashing loudly through the undergrowth. "I saved your pet too! I hate sewing my own head on. I'm going to go frisk Lydia."

"Ah! Don't do that!" Lydia protested.

Cherry looked Leonardo's body up and down as he stood toe-to-toe with Dragonborn, who was a foot taller and clad all in metal with ancient words carved into his armor. No signs of cuts or weakness on Leonardo's arms and legs. No stitches. Just like the day they met. No prolonged blood loss. Just strength and intensity.

"I want you both to leave right now," Leonardo said, his voice dark and quiet.

Dragonborn's face lit up with rage and he shouted, "FUS…"

Leonardo twisted his wrist and the katana jabbed deep against Dragonborn's neck and blood exploded. "I warned you and I'm sorry." Leoanrdo took a step a backwards and let Dragonborn fall to his knees.

Dragonborn pulled handfuls of food from his bag and slumped into the low ferns, creeping into the night, gobbling down apples and cabbages by the fistful. "I knew I should have bought more health potions back in Rorikstead before I left! Lydia, come here and carry my shit so I get to my other food!"

Lydia rolled her eyes said, "I am sworn to carry your burdens," as she followed him.

Leonardo flicked his katana and swiped the blade clean before thrusting it back into its holster and then his face changed completely into a friendly smile and he held his hand down to Cherry, as she sat on the ground, and he said, "I'm afraid my tongue was given back to me and you're going to have to endure my dramatics again. Not that I wasn't charmed by your attempts to fill the silence. You're a great conversationalist when I'm not able to ruin it by chipping in!"

He pulled her to her feet and laughed boyishly, then ran a hand down his healed arm.

"You are the definition of sexy and epic," she said, with the grace of a drugged mental patient, wiping her wet face hysterically.

"Well…" he muttered as he looked shyly at the ground. "I didn't want to be the first one to say it…"

Deadpool hissed from nearby, "Kiss… kiss…"

Leonardo held his nose in the air, took Cherry by the hand, leading her back to the temple, and said, "Come on, Cherry! We don't have to listen to this rude person who wouldn't know bushido if it bit his annoying ass! Carrying a katana doesn't make you a ninja and I have wanted to say that for days now!"

* * *

The nuns congratulated Leonardo on his victory as Champion of Eros and assured him that his name would instantly be forgotten to history because he wasn't a huge blonde Nordic hero with a god for a father. "That's just my luck anyway and I wouldn't have it any other way!" he said, petting Sakura as he sat at the nuns' feet like the picture of an obedient pupil.

"You must know…" a nun said as she slapped Deadpool's hand while he tried to rub her bald head for good luck, "…this will not last. It is only given to you as a humble servant of life and order and you will lose your healing ability as soon as earth is safe."

"My healing is better than yours," Deadpool said. "So let's hit the road, jack! I want to get out of this chapter before it hits thirty pages."

Cherry said, "I'm exhausted. But I'm going to stay up and listen to you talk all night. I don't care about what."

Leonardo patted Sakura on the backside and stood up. He said to her, "Now stay here, little one. This is a dangerous journey and the nuns can take care of you better than me." He sighed and then turned to leave, gesturing at Cherry to follow him.

They went all the way to the hot spring while Sakura bleated after him as if in pain.

Cherry's chest constricted more with every plaintive cry and it only sounded more pathetic as it reverberated off the black trees in the night. She grabbed Leonardo's hand and tugged gently, saying in a choked voice, "You can't do that! Daddy can't leave his little girl behind! Can't you see that she's scared all alone? She might be with all those other people, but she's still alone!"

He blinked softly and then said, "Okay. I'll take her along. I don't want to cause her any undue stress. I'll have Mikey meet us up at the edge of the woods and he can take her along in the van for a while and then she can go with Don. I suppose we all look similar enough that she might not know the difference, hopefully... Don texted me with a message about our next mission. You know, if we survived and stuff. Not that I thought we wouldn't! I think I socialize better when I can't talk…"

They went back to the temple and reclaimed Sakura, but they didn't leave for another twenty minutes because Leonardo couldn't force himself to leave without lecturing Deadpool for senselessly killing so many monkeys.

Finally, they trudged back through the forest together. Leonardo held Sakura in one arm and Cherry held his other hand and they didn't say a word until they reached the edge of the forest.


	13. The Geisha House

**THE GEISHA HOUSE**

_Okay, I don't watch the Nick cartoon or anything, but I heard that baby Karai offered Leo a cucumber because she thought he was a kappa. I was all ARGH! I totally wrote all these kappa cucumber gags before that episode aired! I am not kidding. I feel so cheated. It was like canonized after I wrote it, but before I could publish it or something. Anyway..._

"Do you have your cover story down?" Cherry asked as she fussed with her hair, wondering if it made her look more like Marge Simpson than a geisha. "You're supposed to be an important and experienced man. Not a blushing virgin in this scenario. So don't stammer and drop things every time a girl rubs up on you. It's sexy, but totally unhelpful at the moment."

Leonardo rolled his eyes and pulled the brush out of her hair. He glanced at a picture of a vintage geisha hanging on the wall and she felt her hair pulled up into several plaits as he tried to copy the hairstyle on the photograph. "I can handle pretending that I'm socially competent for a while. I'll pretend to be Mikey. That's how I normally do it. I think, 'How would Mike act in this situation?' and then I try to dull it down a lot so that I don't look crazy. And can you remember that you're spying and not doing research? Don't ask the Japanese businessmen about their sex lives or subsistence patterns or offer them free lap dances for information."

Cherry winced as she watched Leonardo miraculously sculpt her hair into the perfect example of a blonde geisha, pulling her hair in the process. "Hey, I think the free lap dance would work if the facility owner is a dude. How do you know how to do hair, precious?"

"It's just simple procedure. It isn't that hard. Your hair smells very good, by the way," he said and then rummaged in a drawer for flowers and hair accessories.

She grabbed them from his hands and randomly stuck them into her perfect hair. "Thanks. I washed it. How did you manage to get owner of this place so friendly when you're..."

"So ugly...?" he muttered darkly. Leonardo pulled out his phone and clicked a rapid text as he inspected the surroundings. "I told them I'm a kappa. It's like a mischievous Japanese water spirit. So I expect they'll feed me a lot of cucumbers and warn me not to rape their women..."

"Oh, so you're playing on their superstitions! That's very smart! Do you look like a kappa?" She pulled out a jar of white make up and dabbed it on her cheeks. "I'm going to look like that guy from KISS."

Leonardo didn't respond for a few seconds and finally said, "Well, being thought of as a water demon is much better than how I'm usually seen by humans." He corrected the haphazardly placed ornaments in her hair as she applied makeup. He said, "Now I'll be right there in the room. So... don't worry. I mean, geisha just sing and dance and act friendly. They converse and amuse men."

Cherry stopped applying makeup and watched as he fidgeted with a flower in her hair. "What's the worry? All you have to do is drink some sake and ask innocently probing questions of the patrons."

Cherry heard a text alert and rummaged in her open backpack for her phone. Her screen showed a text that read DONATELLO: this animal won't be quiet. I just gave it some tranquilizers.

She scoffed and showed Leonardo the text message from his brother. He seized her phone with an annoyed huff and typed a long text message in response, reprimanding his brother for drugging his dependent. "What's this?" Leonardo asked, still looking at her phone. "DAD says that he misses you and he's sorry for leaving you. Does someone use your father's phone? That sounds awfully mushy for Diane. I got the feeling that she'll do well in a zombie apocalypse."

Cherry's heart beat against her chest wall and she grabbed the phone from his hand. "How am I supposed to know? Why are you reading my personal texts? It's the name I listed the guy I'm sleeping with that I never told you about! So that nosy alien ninjas don't know that I have a boyfriend! Don't read my phone!"

Leonardo handed her back the phone and then pulled his own phone out of his gear and handed that to her also. "I know that's your dad's old phone number and it was disconnected less than a week ago. When did you start getting texts from this imaginary boyfriend of yours? It was recent, wasn't it? Unless your father masterminded his own death like Tom Sawyer, then this is a trick of some kind and you should tell me when it happens again. Understand?" He hovered darkly, waiting for passive acceptance of his decree.

Cherry looked at her phone and read DAD'S text message again. "Sure. Maybe I'll read all your private messages while I'm at it to be even."

Leonardo sighed and put his hands on her shoulders. "I don't mean to cross boundaries. It's just very suspicious and I don't like the idea of someone or something jerking you around in a way that I know will hurt you. Go ahead and read my phone messages. It's nothing but texts to my brothers and sister about the task at hand. Oh, there are some embarrassing messages between myself and Karai arguing about honor and her loyalty that make me look pretty stupid. So go ahead and enjoy them. It is my penance." Leonardo worked his fingers into her shoulders as he babbled. He said, "Just be polite and friendly and make small talk and be charming with the men in the geisha house." He kneaded a little harder and glanced nervously at the door. "I don't mean to insinuate that you aren't normally charming, but don't talk about men paying you to put diapers on them or things like that. Smile and nod and giggle, I think. Normally, I wouldn't go along with an undercover plan in a place of such disrepute and put you in such a dishonorable situation, but this is an emergency. If the owner of this Geisha House is connected to that facility that employs the scientist that Raph is currently holding hostage, then we may be able to corner him and get a location or information on their plans. I'd like to find him as soon as possible and persuade him to give me the information that I need." They both watched their reflections in the mirror as he massaged her shoulders. He added lamely, "That means I'd rather beat someone up than entertain women... I just thought I'd..." He swallowed as if his throat were full of sand, "...make that clear..."

Cherry turned around to look him in the eye, brushing away his massage. "Well, either way you'll get to fight or flirt, so I guess the possible outcomes are both positive for you." She pictured a simpering geisha giggling at Leonardo and unintentionally slammed their phones onto the makeup table. "Are you worried that I can't handle being a demure lady for a few hours? What do you think I do every night at work? I giggle and smile and pretend that I'm interested." Cherry affected a flirty laugh and ran her hand down Leonardo's side. "See, it isn't hard."

He took a step backwards and crossed his arms. "Well, you see, I'm not sure what they really expect out of you here. These aren't real geishas. This is an American establishment pretending that they have geishas. And in the past that might mean that they... um... they might expect... It isn't out of the question..."

"Why are you fumbling like that?" Cherry asked as she pulled off her shirt and then inspected a pink kimono, thinking it looked like a finely embroidered tent. "You mean it's a Japanese themed whore-house pretty much? Don't worry. I won't let a scary hooker grab you or anything. Woah, I am totally stealing some of these bras to replace the one that Dragonborn stole. I'll leave some cash on the makeup table."

Leonardo turned around and hid his blushing eyes as she rummaged through a rack of bras and put one on.

"You can look if you like," she said. "I know from experience that you do."

"I have to get ready to patronize the establishment. I paid for a reservation," Leonardo said and then swung his arms awkwardly as if he couldn't figure out what to do with them. "I paid for the highest level of service and whatever that entails. It seemed only fitting since I bragged about my wealth. So... we'll see how this goes..." He swallowed hard again and then tightened all of the buckles on his gear for no apparent reason.

Cherry turned the kimono over and over, trying to tell the arm hole apart from the neck hole. "Did you pay for a hooker?! What were you thinking? I guess it might be a good chance to get some good information while she's straddling you."

"I'm not going to do anything!" he hissed. "I need to go. This is the neck hole. Remember that you're ladylike and refined and that some ancient billionaire probably paid ten thousand dollars to take your virginity."

Cherry pulled the kimono out of his overly helpful hands. "Yeah, yeah. I've seen Memoirs of a Geisha. I've got it. Get going. You have work to do too."

Leonardo slipped out the door with his insulted nose in the air, his form full of the grace of a trained and deadly warrior. Cherry wondered if it would have been a better idea for Leonardo to be the geisha instead.

* * *

Cherry spent more than an hour applying makeup and then asked another geisha for help applying it on the back of her neck.

The geisha asked, "Don't you normally apply it yourself, as the rituals require?" She applied the white makeup on the back of Cherry's neck with a steady and delicate hand.

"Uh... I have a palsy. So I get a dispensation from my ordnung..." Cherry thought that she'd possibly mixed up geishas with the Amish, but hoped that the girl didn't notice. Then she remembered that she needed to investigate the owner and whereabouts of the scientific facility and said, "So being a geisha in New York must have financial benefits. I'm looking to branch out. I mean, I want to get a part time job, but I spend so much time on my damn hair that I think I need to quit and go into another business."

"Do you?" the geisha asked. "But I would think that being a blonde and blue eyed American would give you great favor with the men in this place as a curiosity."

Cherry grumbled and then bit her lip, remembering the cruel insinuations flung at Leonardo based on nothing but his appearance and decided that she wouldn't pitch a fit because someone had called her blonde. "Do you know of any other businesses around here that might be worth checking out?"

"Oh, no! I never look to anything else. I am so very happy to work here," the geisha said in a small and prim voice that made Cherry want to slap her. "My father is a fisherman and ever since I was a child I have admired the maiko in Kyoto. Every day my father sent me to the market to buy the bread for dinner. Between my parents and the seven of us children it was not much. But now I am able to send money to them and I am grateful for what I have." She wiped away a tear.

"You couldn't just get a job at McDonald's or something back in Kyoto?" Cherry asked, sneering.

The geisha stuck a jade pin in Cherry's hair and stabbed her in the scalp. "No, I do not know of any local opportunities better than this. Did you see the green kappa client?"

"Yeah, he has nice toned thighs right?" Cherry asked, thinking that the geishas were probably all starving actresses from New Jersey pretending to be extras from Memoirs of a Geisha.

The geisha giggled and covered her mouth. "I'm afraid to entertain the kappa. He did pay for a night upstairs. But it may be exciting to be with one so savage as a kappa."

"Oh..." Cherry groaned, after overcoming the urge to tell the geisha off for calling Leonardo savage. Cherry wasn't worried being alone upstairs with a pawing Japanese businessman, but more worried about Leonardo having a panic attack when he found himself trapped alone in a room with a woman trying to deflower him.

"I think my hair is good for now," Cherry said, coldly waving the geisha away. "I need to psyche myself up for game time now."

The geisha bowed and smiled, then shuffled gracefully to a table to fix her elegant hair.

"Stupid geishas," Cherry muttered to herself as she rummaged in her backpack to find Leonardo's phone to waste the hour before tea time.

Most of the texts were to his family, giving specific orders or receiving reports on evil-doing and requests for battle commands. The other half of the texts from his brothers openly made fun of him for many adolescent reasons. Most the recent teasing revolved around his ability to score with a hot blonde to save the world and what they should all write on their epitaphs since the world would clearly end if it relied on their brother being charismatic with a pretty girl. She read the text messages between himself and Karai and laughed. It started with epic proclamations about familial vengeance and devolved into Leonardo declaring, "I am not immature! Am not!" And then the conversation ended.

Most of his recent texts were to Cherry and she felt a little surge of pride. She glanced around the room and decided to sneak a look at his browsing history. It wasn't snooping, but an anthropological investigation into his alien origins and culture.

The oldest entries mostly had to do with Foot Clan and Purple Dragon activity, various crime reports, Japanese language, online shopping for an older man and then a frenzy of browsing as of yesterday. She realized that the change in theme began at the same time that they met up with his brother Donatello and had a battle plan session about his suspicions that an evil scientist interested in Chaos had associates with a nearby Geisha House. Leonardo had looked up information on the Geisha House and the owner of the establishment and the contact information for the Geisha House, but then he looked at ten separate websites containing nothing but love poems and then moved on to old Cosmopolitan articles about sex.

Cherry closed his phone and threw it back into the backpack as if it might explode. So he'd researched love poetry and sex right after making contact with a Geisha House and buying a night with a geisha-themed prostitute? Her face melted with heat. So he planned to straddle his whore for information all along? Well, she shouldn't be surprised. Men were all the same whether or not they were kappa, alien or human after all.

A middle aged Japanese woman wearing a large geisha wig and a sour expression clapped her hands at them and ordered them to put on their shoes and get ready to entertain the men in room six.

Cherry grabbed her wooden platform shoes and then stumbled behind a screen, making her way as quietly as she could in wooden platforms to a group of giggling women. She'd heard one of them said that the kappa was in Room Eight as they helped fasten up their gear. "Where is your obi?" one of the girls asked, pointing at Cherry's midsection. "You must wear an obi or you can't go out. Who here read the sports page today? My boyfriend took the sports page before I could read it."

One of the girls produced a newspaper and they crowded around it, looking at headlines and the day's financial news as Cherry pulled a long piece of cloth off a shelf. It was covered in delicate floral details and she rolled her eyes, thinking she looked like a ridiculous anime character. Sakura, the snarky geisha. She glanced at the back door marked EXIT and for a brief panicky moment, considered abandoning Leonardo and running away.

But she couldn't leave him to be molested by a geisha themed prostitute and demanded that one of the other girls put on her obi since her ordnung had given her special dispensation to ask for help dressing herself too.

Cherry followed the other girls into the hallway to a room with a shoji panel door decorated with a painting of a cherry tree in bloom. She scoffed and realized that Leonardo must have chosen this room on purpose to make fun of her. One of the geishas slid the screen back and Cherry shuffled in, her wooden shoes sliding on the floor much more loudly than her companions.

Leonardo sat on his knees, straight and smiling, with a cup of sake in his hand, laughing at a middle aged Japanese man's joke. She tried not to look too hard at him and copied the bowing and scraping feminine behavior of her counterparts, while cursing patrimonial societies.

After a few more minutes of vague male laughter and Japanese talk from the men that she didn't understand, she heard Leonardo say, "There are some very pretty girls with us now!"

A girl hobbled daintily to Leonardo and sat next to him, pressing up against him. He said something silky in Japanese and got a refined giggle from his geisha. Cherry sat next to the loudest Japanese business man, deciding he would probably be the easiest to please and poured him another drink, copying Leonardo's geisha.

One of the businessman said, "Maybe we should keep an eye on the women, kappa-san. You have a wicked reputation with them."

Leonardo scowled for a second and then smiled and said, "I have been appeased with cucumbers, so I think I can manage myself for the time being. But thank you for your concern for my well-known propensity for violent rape and for publicizing it. I'm sure that the ladies are glad to be warned." He gave a small bow and went back to his cucumbers.

"I meant no offense! I was being funny!" the loudest man said, pointing at him with a chop stick. "And you have two girls all for yourself now and we all only get one. And mine is blonde!" he said, with noticeable disgust.

Cherry couldn't figure out how a small brained female should react to this insult, so she decided to pretend she didn't understand that she'd been insulted and giggled.

"What is your name, blonde one?" Leonardo asked as he put an arm around both of his geishas, who looked as if they were both paralyzed with indecision as to whether or not they should be happy about his contact.

"My name is Sakura, kappa-san," she said, smiling stupidly and pouring more sake. "Does kappa-san like blondes?"

"No, kappa-san usually likes Japanese girls," Leonardo said and took a sip of his sake.

Cherry suddenly wondered if he'd already been plied with sake several times before she came in the room and hoped that he remembered to direct the conversation towards evil scientists who employed ninjas as security, unless his teenage hormones were already stirring in a monsoon of anticipation of quality time with one of the geishas. He liked Japanese girls?

"Why do you look so much at the kappa?" the businessman asked Cherry.

She sighed and forced herself to stop staring at Leonardo as he smiled at his weak minded geisha. Cherry replayed her mental fantasy in her head. It concluded with Cherry knocking his geisha over the head with a metal plate and kissing him so hard that his ancestors felt it. But in reality, Leonardo subtly stroked the arm of a geisha in a blue kimono and the unattractive businessman poked Cherry in the arm, trying to get her attention.

"What is it you do for a living?" Cherry asked the loud man beside her.

The businessman perked up when his geisha suddenly showed interest in his professional life and said, "You know, I run a paper mill on the Jersey shore. I have been fined more times than I can count for air pollution!" He puffed out his chest proudly.

"Oh, so you're the reason it smells like cabbage down on the beach," she said and then smiled and giggled, holding on to his arm.

The loud man laughed heartily and said, "Yes, I take credit for that, Sakura! I employ several hundred people. I am the foundation of an empire!" He grabbed sushi roll with a chopstick, swallowed it whole and belched.

Leonardo spoke sweetly in Japanese to his ladies and they laughed, hanging on to his every word. His face was slightly flushed and he asked for more sake.

The paper mill owner leaned over and said, grinning to Cherry, "So I like spending time here because you girls are all virgins right? That is the best kind of girl." He leered at her and she covered her face and giggled self-consciously.

Leonardo clanked down his sake cup.

Cherry felt a slight bubble of rage percolating at her core. Leonardo wanted to straddle a prostitute. Why should he have any opinion about Cherry's prior sexual experience? Cherry rated herself about twenty percent above a virgin, but it was still sexist of him to demonstrate an negative opinion about it. She said, still with a simpering innocent smile, "That reminds me of a quote. 'Do nothing that is of no use.' Do you know it, kappa-san? It is by Miyamoto..." she couldn't remember the last part of the name and hoped that Leonardo would fill in the blank for her.

"...Usagi...?" he asked vaguely, as a geisha brushed against his arm while standing to get up and organize a dance.

"No!" she hissed and then fanned herself and giggled. "Miyamoto M..."

"Miyamoto Musashi! I'm sorry. I'm distracted by all the... sake and girls... I mean..." He sighed fussily and one of the men laughed. He put on his game face again and said, "Do you read The Book of Five Rings then, Sakura? That doesn't seem like very refined reading for a girl who spends all her time putting up her hair and dancing."

She waved at him as if she were a Southern Belle and said, "Oh, I hardly read! I have heard that some skilled warriors are also very adept hair dressers."

The paper mill owner laughed and nearly knocked over his sake. Cherry leaned over to steady it and he gave her a gratuitous groping from behind. She laughed mechanically and sat down again.

Leonardo moved as if he'd suddenly sprung off his heels and then resettled himself. "I do know another good quote. 'If you wish to control others, you must first control yourself.' I think a sense of control is a good trait for any man who is in business. It instills an example in those you lead. Wouldn't you agree, Mr. Ban?"

The paper mill owner grumbled and looked over at Leonardo. "Yes, but I am off duty. You'd like to spend a little more time with me later, wouldn't you, cherry blossom?"

"Oh, thank you!" Cherry gushed and felt slightly sick. She looked over at Leonardo and found him staring headlong at a dancing geisha, and she said sullenly, "Do you agree with Miyamoto Musashi's statement: 'All man are the same except for their belief in their own selves, regardless of what others may think of them'?"

Leonardo blinked a few times and said, "I don't think so. I mean, I can only really know my own heart. I don't know how to explain myself except for maybe that old poem that goes, 'Although I come to you constantly, over the roads of dreams, those nights of love, are not worth one waking touch of you...' That has been on my mind quite a bit lately. But then I probably just affirmed Miyamoto Musashi's statement because I could never wish to touch this dream." He watched Cherry over the edge of his cup as he took a long sip.

All of the geishas fanned themselves frantically. Did Leonardo have sexy dreams about her constantly now? Her makeup turned pink from an adolescent blush and then she thought that he probably dressed her up in a school girl uniform and whipped her in his dreams. Still, he did have nice poetic delivery. Maybe he could recite poetry to his prostitute while she straddled him. Cherry stared at the table for a few seconds, blocking out the conversation around her. Finally she said, "Did anyone make love for real last night?"

All the people in the room laughed, except for Leonardo, who put down his cup and sighed dramatically as if he'd just watched the saddest moment in the history of the world unfold before his eyes.

Mr. Ban said, "I did! With my repulsive wife! But it is a small price to pay for her ketchup fortune."

Leonardo took a sip of his sake and said, "Miyamoto Musashi says, 'Whatever the Way, the master of strategy does not appear fast….Of course, slowness is bad. Really skillful people never get out of time, and are always deliberate, and never appear busy.' I think that applies to more areas of life beyond the art of the katana."

"So you're saying that great love making is like sword fighting?" Cherry asked, repressing her usual howling laugh. "You keep steady time and sneak up unawares?"

Leonardo accepted another plate of sushi from a geisha and said, "I mean, I think it is a skilled art form and that because the methods of martial arts can be applied to other areas of life, you don't need to go out screwing everything that moves to say that you're a good lover. You need to have some finesse. Is it hot in here?" Leonardo pushed on the shoji screen to allow in some air.

"Well, this skilled martial artist, who seems to think that he'll be a great lover just because he's good at waving a sword around may want to consider Miyamoto Musashi's other words: 'It is difficult to understand the universe if you only study one planet.' I would expect any man who makes love to me to have a soft touch. I wouldn't want him banging away on me like he's trying to break my neck unawares." She took a sip of sake, and tried not to choke on the bitterness. How had Leonardo drank so much of this? Especially when they served it in half shot glasses.

Mr. Ban said, "That takes practice. A more experienced man has the right touch." He tried to give her a sexy growl.

Leonardo drummed a finger on his cup and then glanced at one of the geishas again. Cherry realized that he spent half of his time keeping an eye on the girl in blue, as she danced serenely and ignored the conversation completely. Of course he would like the traditional Japanese girl who danced and nodded with subdued agreement. Finally, she knew what he liked.

She clanked her cup down on the table and a little sake spilled over.

Leonardo said, "As Miyamoto Musashi says, 'The true science of martial arts means practicing them in such a way that they will be useful at any time, and to teach them in such a way that they will be useful in all things.'" Leonardo politely applauded for the blue geisha's dance and stood up, then whispered something low in her ear, eliciting a lot of giggling and nodding. He then bowed at the remaining people in the room, his eyes on Cherry and said, "If you'll all excuse me. I would like to go prove my theories correct. Good night, Sakura." He hesitated and then left the room, his hand shaking slightly as he held on to the doorframe on the way out.

She watched Leonardo and the blue geisha leave with heavy dread. Oh Virginal One was about to go get laid with a geisha prostitute because she had just challenged his manhood in front of everyone in the room. She slapped herself in the forehead and smeared white make up on her palm. "So, Mr. Ban. I'm really full. Are you? Let's head upstairs then. I'm eager for an experienced man to show me what I've been missing." She smiled and fawned over him and they left for the upstairs within seconds.

* * *

She spent the first fifteen minutes asking probing questions about all of his business associates while dancing provocatively, just out of his reach.

"No Herman Schlossing doesn't do much in the field of science research. Do you want me to pretend to be a scientist? You seem very distracted by the idea." He made a grab for her and she swiveled out of his reach.

"The best things come to those who wait." She listened for Ninja-Boy's voice nearby in another room, but couldn't hear anything.

Mr. Ban got up and grabbed her around the waist. She waved her arms through the air and cried out, "I HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM FIRST! PUT ME DOWN! THIS ISN'T VERY ROMANTIC, MR. BAN!"

"Oh, sorry." He sat her down on her feet and said, "You're so sexy. It's getting me excited. Go freshen up and hurry right back." He patted her backside and pointed out the door.

She bowed and scampered out of the room on her wooden platforms, scooting down the hall, listening for voices. Finally, she saw the shadow of an alien ninja sitting on a bed inside one of the dimly lit shoji screens. She knocked lightly at the door and then barged in without waiting for an answer. "So, stud. Is your honor still intact? Where's your geisha?"

Leonardo sat on the edge of the bed with his face in his hands. He stood up suddenly, ignited into action at the sound of her voice and snuffed as if he had a cold. "She had to leave. She already told me everything. I have the address and the name and everything. Don will meet us there in a about twelve hours. He had to go help Raph with the bomb. We can wait here." He stood up and walked past her out the door.

She followed him, trotting loudly on her wooden platforms. "Mr. Ban will be really let down. He didn't get to bang his blonde geisha. Your geisha will pretty upset that you didn't show her your martial arts," she said and held on to his arm as they hurried down the hall.

"I already got a room with my whore," Leonardo said as he pulled out a key from his belt and turned the lock on the hotel room door. The heavy cherry wood furnishings that were clearly European and decorated with occasional Japanese themed screens and bed spreads to distract the occupant from the inconsistency. She locked the door behind them and kicked her platforms across the room, then collapsed face first on the bed. Cherry's backpack sat next to the nightstand. "You already brought up our stuff? Good foresight! Do you mind if I walk around naked?"

Leonardo said dimly, "I would be thrilled if a pretty girl walked around my hotel room totally naked."

Cherry stood up and unpinned her hair. It fell down in a staticky tangled mess and she pulled off her kimono, bra and panties and threw them on the floor. "I must look like a naked clown."

Leonardo stared at her for a few minutes and then sat with his back to her, staring glumly out the window.

"What's wrong? You must have some pretty smooth moves, Sexy, to get your girl to confess so fast." Cherry wondered which Cosmo article he had to thank for his speedy seduction.

He scoffed and said, "As soon as we were alone and I locked the door behind us, she begged me not to rape her since I'm a horrifying demon and told me everything as soon as I asked."

She put on a bathrobe that lay folded on the bed and cautiously approached him. She stroked his face while he stared bleary eyed out at the city and the ocean beyond it on the horizon.

"I don't expect much from people, but maybe it's too much," he said quietly.

Cherry bent down and leaned into him. He hissed with shock as she kissed him lightly and then said, "I'm going to take a shower to clean off all this crap. Don't kappas like water? If I bow nicely would you join me?"

"Shower with you?" he asked, eyes wide. "Thank you, but I'd rather not. I mean... you know what I mean. I have to get information on this science facility while you're in there. I'll stay up while you shower and then I'll sleep on this couch thing by the window and you can have the bed." He looked back out the window and fixated on a pigeon on the windowsill.

Cherry put her hands on her hips and said, in a loud and commanding voice, "Leonardo... whatever-you-last-name-is! You're going to let one wannabe geisha get you down like this? Because that's utter bullshit and you know it! If you're going to sleep, it'll be in the bed right next to me! I've eaten your tongue, damn it! If that doesn't mean we're close then I don't know what does! I trust you more than any man on the planet, which is ironic since you're an alien. But it's the truth! So quit whining! You're so much tougher than that! Any girl that would find you threatening clearly hasn't worked in a strip club in the private rooms getting fingered when she's not looking! Well... here...!" Cherry pulled off her bathrobe and threw it across the room, standing in front of him naked. "You're so upset that one stupid bitch doesn't trust you? Well, I do. So suck it up!"

"Are you making this difficult for me on purpose?!" he shouted. "Put your robe back on!"

"Why?" she asked, hands on her bare hips. "You're upset that I trust you with my life and body and everything?"

He crossed the room as if pursued by an enemy and said dramatically, from just in front of the locked door leading into the hallway, "You're tormenting me! Is it funny? You're naked and trust me and alone in a hotel room! You hate my poetry and it took a whole day to learn that! Just put your clothes on and we're only talking business from now on!"

Leonardo fished out his phone and frantically clicked on the screen, muttering to himself angrily.

She picked up her robe and put it back on. "Sorry if you're offended at my trusting you..."

"Why did you have to say that? 'Did anybody here REALLY make love last night?'" he said rather hysterically as he continued to click at his phone while yelling at her. "I suppose it makes Mr. Ban much more of a man since he had sex with his wife that he hates, rather than..." He headed vaguely in the direction of the bathroom, now looking at the floor.

"So is your brother coming to pick us up in a few hours? Don't go in the bathroom! I get a shower first! You can hide out here with your phone and your porn that you're deleting or whatever you're doing while I wash this make up off!" She followed him to the bathroom and yanked on his bicep, unable to steer him out of the bathroom.

"I'm not deleting porn." Leonardo shuffled back into the other room as if his knees were both broken.

"Maybe I should leave the geisha make up on and bow and wash your feet," Cherry said as she left the bathroom door wide open and threw off the robe again, preparing to get into the shower. "Whatever you want, Master! It is my wish to obey!"

"What are you talking about?!" he yelled, his voice coming closer as he came back in the bathroom so that he could argue over the sound of the water running. "And you do a very poor impression of a Japanese woman, if that was your intention."

Cherry tested the water with her hand and then felt all of her nerves snap with frustration. She said, "Tell me what you really want to say instead of following me around and hinting." She washed off the white makeup in the running shower and then groped the wall blindly for a towel with her eyes shut and full of water. She felt a dry towel pressed into her arms and patted her face dry.

"I don't have anything appropriate to say," he said, crossing his arms and looking at the floor with a pinched face.

She tossed the towel on the floor and turned off the shower, realizing that it might run infinitely while he stammered angrily.

"So you do have something to say or is it that you just don't want to offend me?" she asked. "Well you're a big boy." She put her hands lightly on his sides and tried to look into his eyes.

Leonardo shifted on his feet slightly, his eyes drifting sideways to the wall, attempting to elude eye contact. Cherry felt his warm sides move as he breathed harder. "You're too close and naked. Just take you're shower. I need to think."

Cherry stroked his sides and waited for an answer, his breathe coming faster.

"I already have commitment to certain things and no matter how much I want other things, I can't let myself..." he muttered. "And I don't even like blondes." He leaned in and kissed her, his mouth moving tentatively against hers and hands on her waist.

* * *

Half an hour later, Cherry lay on her back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, while Leonardo checked his phone again.

"Sorry about that," he said and then put it on the bed beside him and leaned over her, petting her hair. "I think I lost my place."

Cherry put her arms around his shoulders again. "Does Cosmo have any advice for what to do about that?"

His eyes widened with horror and he stammered, "No... I haven't found it terribly helpful..."

"Relax," she said and leaned up to kiss him, wondering if his ancestors felt it. "People had sex a long time without needing an instruction manual from Cosmopolitan."

"Are we going to have sex?!" Leonardo asked in slight alarm and then leaned down to run his mouth over breast to comfort his new anxiety.

She stroked the back of his head and felt his hands tentatively stroking her body. She tingled with contentment and wondered if things would progress faster if she could convince him to stop consulting the online sex oracle.

"Hey, Leonardo! Thanks for getting her warmed up for me!" an obnoxious voice called through the window.

Another familiar voice cried, "Holy shit, Leo! Stop! I'm going to go blind, dude!"

Leonardo's mouth unclenched from her breast and he looked over her head momentarily at the window before grabbing the blanket in one hand and wrenching her off the bed with the other, sliding down on the other side and out of view. He wrapped the blanket around both of them. Cherry knew he wanted to hide his erection from view from the attackers and wondered why he didn't just bother wearing pants.

Then a gun fired several times and Cherry shouted, covering her ears. Glass exploded all over the room, tinkling on the floor.

One of the familiar voices cried, "What was necessary? He would have just let us in! Well, he would let me in! Yo, Leo! Are you decent now? It's an emergency!"

Leonardo rolled his eyes and then covered his face in despair and shouted, "No, I am not decent! You should know that since you were perving at the window just a second ago! What's going on? Deadpool had better not shoot anybody! I have a tongue now and I can use it!"

"Yeah, I saw you putting it to work. Good job, man!" said Deadpool from the other side the bed. Glass cracked as he stomped around the room. "We were in the neighborhood and thought we'd shoot out your window and catch you having sex. It was totally part of my plan and not an accident because we got cornered."

Mikey tumbled across the bed and crouched down beside them, nunchucks in both of his hands. "Sorry, dude. Hal Barton is about ten minutes behind us. Not much time to explain."

"I don't think he'll be a problem because of the hundred or so ninjas that followed us here," Deadpool said, scratching his ass with his gun. It randomly fired through his backside and he said, "Ow! Guess that means the safety is off when that red button is flashing. Note to self and ass." He scratched the bloody hole in his backside as it dripped on the carpet.

"Hal Barton? Hundreds of ninjas?" Leonardo took a few deep breaths with closed eyes. "Okay, just give me a second here! Could Deadpool get his bloody butt cheek out of my face, please? Mikey, why are you with Deadpool? And why did you both bring Hal Barton here to Cherry? Isn't that the exact opposite of my orders, you two?"

"Hey, I'm a one man band of badass. I don't take orders from anybody! You told us to do something and it happened to fit in with the shit I was about to do anyway," Deadpool said. "Maybe you should picture that old nun at the Temple of Eros in a thong if you're down there trying to meditate your boner away."

"I need you two to get away for a minute! Mike! Get that bathrobe in the bathroom and bring it back here for Cherry!" Leonardo shouted, his face pinched with humiliation and rage.

Deadpool said, "Hey, Leonardo! I didn't know your brother was a super hero! He said he's Turtle Titan. He's going to write me a letter of recommendation for Captain America so I can join the Avengers. They put me on the waiting list and I was going to bump off Clint, but Mikey said they wouldn't look too favorably on it. I said it wouldn't matter if I made it look like Thanos did it or something. I was going to cut his head off and leave a sign that said, "I TOTALLY DID THIS. NOT DEADPOOL." And sign it Thanos. So you have healing powers too now that you're Eros' bitch right? We should cut each others' heads off at the same time! It'll be a trust exercise like that time Lydia shot me in the head with her crossbow!"

"If you try to cut my head off, Deadpool... I'll... tell Captain America that... Oh, just shut up, Wade! Get away from me! Where is Hal Barton? I don't see any ninjas yet! Give me my gear, Wade! I'm calling you Wade until further notice because you're being so annoying that you don't deserve to be called Deadpool at the moment. Prove to me that you're worthy of being called Deadpool and I'll do it."

Deadpool pointed out the window and said, "Okay, there's seven ninjas on the windowsill. I was going to let them surprise you. But I'm going to be a good guy and warn you instead."

Cherry ground her teeth, her body still pounding with need for Leonardo. "Well, what do I do?"

Mikey came out of the bathroom holding Cherry's bathrobe and Leonardo's gear and tossed them both across the room, then pulled out his weapons and moved towards the ninjas that had just entered the room and left Cherry's eyeline although she could hear him grunting and then a ninja flew across the room, dead or unconscious.

"Hey, are you mad at me, Mikey?" Deadpool asked as he pulled out a gun and shot randomly at the group of ninjas without really looking. Blood spattered the wall across from Cherry. "I let you eat half of my chimichanga and that means we're BFF's for life! A man's chimichanga shows a sacred trust of brotherhood!"

"You show a sacred trust of brotherhood by not ratting out my own brother to a horde of ninjas by pointing at his hotel and giving them his room number, dude!" Mikey shouted from the other side of the room.

Leonardo finally stood up with his swords in hand. "Cherry, stay down! Wade, you take Hal Barton since you can't be killed and obviously we can. Mike, you and I will take these ninjas! I know I can heal from Chaotic energy now, but I think I should stay with Cherry. You're enough for Hal, right, Wade?"

"Why are you giving me an assignment? I'm an independent contractor. You go fight Hal Barton. You're the boss. You should thank me instead of ordering me around." Deadpool shot a ninja in the groin and he dropped to his knees shrieking.

"Thank you?!" Leonardo shouted as he took a graceful step towards a ninja and cut him down with one slash of his sword. Cherry felt a swirling gust of sexual adrenaline as he she watched him easily dispatch three more while Wade stood beside him, munching on a soggy chimichanga and not helping him in the slightest.

"I'm turning out to be a good source of birth control for you. I think your girl just really wants me." Deadpool looked down at Cherry, the white eyeballs of his hood bulging, and said, "Now, Hottie of Evil, which one of these daddies do you really want to spank you?" He punctuated his tasteless remark by slapping his ass, spraying Leonardo with blood from his self-inflicted gunshot wound. "I've caught you doing the dirty with Leonardo twice now."

"We weren't having sex at the Temple and we weren't now!" Leonardo shouted at him, pulling a katana out of a dying man's stomach.

Cherry agreed that they weren't having sex in the lake, but also thought Deadpool caught them in a technicality this time around.

"I guess they have another name for it now when you have your fingers up a girl's cooch and she's moaning, 'Probe me, Leonardo!" Deadpool paused and then laughed out loud, saying, "Well, Weapon X wasn't sexy. More like excruciating torture." He paused again and then blurted out, "No, I'm not!"

Mikey screamed in agony and Cherry raised her head over the edge of the bed to see him. He dropped his final attacking ninja on the floor and said, "Sorry, that was involuntary to the probing remark."

"Aren't you even going to help me?" Leonardo asked aggressively as he tossed a ninja across the room. "You led a horde of ninjas right to my room and you're not even helping me!"

"My chimichanga is in danger of going soggy," Deadpool said with a full mouth. "And you're the one with all the special powers now."

Leonardo ran out of attacking ninjas and said, "Cherry, are you okay?"

"I'm fine." She pushed herself up, avoiding the broken glass on the floor and drifted to Leonardo's side. "Where's Hal?"

Several car alarms went off with an accompaniment of broken glass and screams down on the street. Mikey leaned out the broken window and said, "Speak of the serial killer. Uh, Wade, were you going to take care of him or not? Leo kind of wants you to do it. I can't regrow my limbs, dude."

Leonardo sighed and said, "Deadpool, I humbly ask you to help me kill Hal Barton. You do know what he does for fun right?"

"Isn't he a nasty child molester?" Deadpool clicked his tongue. "Okay, it's outside of my mission objective here, but since you obviously need me badly, I'll help you take this guy out. If there's one thing we need less of in the world it's crazy guys who kill people for fun."

Leonardo smirked and bowed elaborately. "I am forever in your debt, Deadpool-san. Lead on."

Deadpool pulled out a huge machine gun and said, "Let's redecorate!"

"Don't shoot civilians!" Leonardo warned.

Deadpool kicked the door down and a whacked a passing geisha in the face with the door. "I never shoot civilians unless they walk in front of my bullets. Here, Hally! Daddy wants to have a talk!" He left down the hallway, his gun held aloft. "Laters, baby!"

Cherry put a hand on Leonardo's arm, unable to resist touching him, now that he was intense and bent on destroying ninjas. "Ninja timing sucks..." she muttered in Leonardo ear.

He fought off of a flutter of a smile and said, "Okay, I need to get out there and take care of these ninjas. Mike, can you get down there and rope them off at one end of the street? Can you see Deadpool and Hal?"

A bomb went off near the building and the floor shook. The chandelier tinkled and waved on the ceiling. Geishas ran past the open door half dressed. Mikey scratched his head with a nunchuck. "See them? You heard that right? Deadpool threw a grenade at him and Hal brain blasted through a store front. I see ninjas coming in but they don't sound like they're coming upstairs. What do you think, man? They must know where we are by now."

"I think they're waiting downstairs somewhere to lay a trap. I am not waiting for it. Come on." He grabbed Cherry's hand and she trotted behind him, her heart beating with the excitement of a ninja ambush. "Stay calm. Let me know if you're upset. Don't just stand there worrying and then blow up the building or incinerate someone. Right?" he asked, looking intensely in her eyes and waiting for a response.

She nodded. "I'll try. Don't get stabbed. Even though it's sexy."

He pulled her down the hall by the hand past panicking geishas and male patrons, Mikey following behind them. She heard Mike say, "Hey, there, miss," in a sultry voice as they passed a few girls. "Don't worry, Turtle Titan is on the case!" he said in an unusually low voice.

Leonardo pointed down the hall and ordered some people around in Japanese with an authoritative voice and they instantly rushed off, obeying his orders. "I just told those women to get out of the building and run to safety."

The building shook again and they heard Deadpool saying out on the street, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden BAZOOKA, BITCH!"

"Are you sure that was a great order, Leo?" Mike muttered as the building shook harder than ever and the lights went out. Women screamed up and down the corridor. "So are you my sister-in-law now?" Mikey asked Cherry, elbowing her in the arm as he came along side her. "I think dad will frown on you getting a girlfriend, Leo. I think he'll be even more frowny since she's this harbinger of death chick that you're supposed to save us all from. I think he'll give you flips, man."

She felt Leonardo's grip on her hand tighten and he said, "Stop talking about that. Stay up here and keep an eye on Deadpool and watch these civilians. I'm going downstairs to take care of our guests. Cherry, stay with Mike." He released her hand and went towards a staircase.

Mr. Ban rushed plodded down the corridor wearing nothing but his boxer shorts, his hairy belly spilling over the waistband. He grabbed Cherry's wrist and demanded, "What's going on? I want a refund! Where were you? You were with the kappa?" he asked, his face frozen in disgusted shock.

Mikey pointed at himself and then said, "Wait! I wasn't groping your woman! It was my brother! Wait, do we even know you? Get out of the building, man! Before Deadpool blows it up! Or Hal Barton blows it up! Fuck, Cherry might blow it up! Or the ninjas might kill everybody! My point is, just get out of here!"

A strong pair of hands grabbed Mr. Ban by the shoulders and threw him against the wall. Leonardo held a fist in front of Mr. Ban's face and said, "I'm an honorable man, so you will not say anything to her or my brother and I won't express my deep disgust for you. Save yourself and you won't have to see me again." He released him and didn't waste a second glance as he headed back towards the stairs.

"Dude, he's usually nicer than that," Mikey said, putting an arm around Mr. Ban's shoulders as Mr. Ban glared at Leonardo. "He's just all bad moody because the world is ending and Deadpool interrupted his make out session. I think it's understandable. So get lost huh?"

The building creaked and a police siren blared nearby on the street. Cherry pulled at her hair and said, "I feel so utterly useless! What am I supposed to do?"

"You're supposed to stay with me because Leo wants me to protect you," Mikey said as he went to a window and chanced a look down at the street. "Uh... Why is Deadpool using a cop car as a torpedo?"

Cherry ran down the stairs, leaving Mikey staring at Deadpool fighting below on the street. The pitch black stairs wound down two flights and finally Cherry ran face first into a closed metal door. She groped blindly in the dark for the handle, helped by a gently blinking yellow emergency light in the corridor shining vaguely through the small window in the door.

She glanced through the small window in the door and saw a swirling mass of black suited bodies, swarming a single figure at the end of the corridor. Leonardo fought in the midst of them, his arms covered in the blood of his enemies, both swords twitching and slashing so fast that Cherry couldn't see him strike as they fell to the ground around him. Then she processed the path of bleeding bodies on the floor, all the way down the corridor leading to him.

He didn't waste more than a stroke on any of them and Cherry realized how patient Leonardo must be, when he listened to her patronizingly call him "Oh Virginal One" and "Ninja Boy" and wondered why he hadn't just karate chopped her into submission by this point and carried her back to his headquarters. He massacred at least fifty skilled ninjas with hardly any effort.

Cherry briefly remembered his stammering embarrassment as he handed her the keychain he bought for her and could feel his hands caressing her thighs as he kissed stomach and then had to pull out his phone and consult Cosmo nervously on his technique. What right did she have, enjoying his gentle affection? She needed to get a taxi and head back to GIRLS XXX and beg for her job back.

He finished off one of the last ninjas and she put her hand on the door handle, ignoring all the sensible thoughts she'd just hand, but a hand closed over her mouth and a foul vapor stung her nose, all the way to her brain. The window, and the sight of Leonardo slashing the chest of the last standing ninja, his swords out, blood dripping from his forearms, dissolved and went black.


End file.
